Personally, I don't understand the objections to pinafores.  I like them.  I don't see them as "childish" or "demeaning".  Had I been a girl or young woman in those days, I would've relished wearing one of them, even into my late teens.  They would've been a lovely badge of femininity to me, in addition to my long dresses and long tresses.  The combination would've screamed to boys, "See what I can wear, and you can't."  (One movie with good usage of pinafores is Stephen Spielberg's 1980s masterpiece "The Color Purple".) We must reinforce differences between the sexes.

Bad.

its an intresting piece of history

A very nice piece, thank you. I have a couple of points to add.

The first is that, even as late as the 1930s and 40s, serving as a domestic maid in a well-to-do home was one of the few ways in which an impoverished young woman could move herself up a notch or two on the social ladder. A well trained maid was seen as someone schooled in the 'proper' ways of housekeeping, serving meals, etc. and would be a good catch for a young tradesman who was looking to eventually own his own business and perhaps even have domestic help of his own. Likewise, marriage and housekeeping for her own family was likely to be a much easier job for a woman than the hugge amounts of work that were expected of a girl who was the only maid in a middle class household.   Of course, back in those days no woman was expected to be gainfully employed in any manner after she was married. A working wife was a sign of extreme poverty or of a husband who was a 'poor provider.'

Second, I'd like to say that I too was required to wear either a frilly apron or a pinafore in the 1950's whenever I helped Mother with domestic chores, and most especially after I was old enough to do the laundry. The laundry became my primary chore since I was still being put to bed nightly in diapers for bedwetting until I was almost 14. My Saturday mornings were taken up completely with washing all the household linens for the week as well as all my diapers, then hanging them out on the clothesline, and bringing them in when they were dry. All of this was done in a frilly pinafore apron over the blouse, skirt, and petticoat slip that covered the diapers and plastic panties that Mother required me to wear because I always seemed to need to urinate as soon as my hands got wet. Wearing pants and a shirt was out of the question, since none of my pants would fit over the thick cloth diapers Mother would put me in.

Wearing any apron, and especially a frilly one, makes me feel quite sissyish even to this day.

Frilliette

I guess this shows my age, but -- in the 1940's, I wore an apron when I helped with the dishes, and also eating. It was a fairly common practice, because it protected clothes during a wartime situation.
 Yes, I remember WWII as a boy. Tried on my first girdle and nylons.