Mom Over 'Weird' Trend Of Making Rules To Meet New Babies — 'It’s Almost Like Gatekeeping A Baby'
Um… yeah, it's literally gatekeeping the baby. That's the entire point…
Leszek Glasner | Shutterstock Having a baby is among the most disruptive things that can happen in life, especially if it's your first. From being covered in poo to worrying that every stranger in a 300-mile radius is going to give your baby tuberculosis, it's a fraught time. But one mom thinks a lot of parents take it all a bit TOO seriously.
A mom is over the 'weird' trend of making rules to meet new babies.
The thing is, it's not just the fact that mom is often recovering from surgery AND not sleeping AND trying to learn how to feed the screaming thing AND worrying about how to keep the baby from, you know, dying. It's also that a lot of people feel really entitled to parents' time and space.
Sarah Chai | Pexels
We've all heard the myriad internet stories about meddling mothers-in-law who demand to be in the delivery room or to stay for a month beginning the day mom gets home from the hospital. So it's not exactly surprising that setting some boundaries around meeting the new bundle of joy has become an ever more common trend. But one mom on Reddit feels like it's gone entirely too far.
She feels like her friend's list is 'condescending' and will 'scare off her village.'
To be fair, the friend's list IS a bit… let's say thorough. It covers the usual things like "no kissing the baby" to avoid germs and "no unannounced visits" because what parent in the throes of new babyhood is in the mood for a drop-by. None, I'd wager.
But some of the things on the list are a bit surprising, like not giving the baby nicknames and forbidding visitors from wearing perfume or even deodorant. The mom also has a REALLY hardline stance about profanity around the baby with a two-strikes-you're-out policy.
"I get the anxiousness," the Redditor wrote in her post, but said this list felt like overkill that comes off as condescending. She also worried that it would be alienating to those in the new mom's life. "I feel like she is going to be very upset in a few months when she realizes she scared off her village," she wrote.
However, others online felt like the list was not for the new mom's friends, but for meddling family members.
It's hard not to notice the items on the new mom's list that seem directly targeted at family members who can't mind their own business. Rules like "no advice (we are new parents, we can assure you our advice is up to date)" and "no comments about formula, we are breastfeeding and that’s that" seem specifically written for a meddling mother-in-law.
Many Redditors felt certain this was the case. "The list is a CYA blanket statement so they can't be accused of singling out certain problematic people," one person wrote. "Yeah, this list is absolutely [for] when weird uncle Bill shows up unannounced and puts out his cigarette on the front step," another added.
Even the nickname rule struck many as likely targeted at some family member who has a lot of opinions about what they named the baby. The list does still hit a little weird (no deodorant? What on Earth?), but perhaps it strikes some of us that way because, as one Redditor put it, "your family aren’t disrespectful boundary stompers and it shows."
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
