SerpApi.Org
A woman was minding her own business with her two young children when she got into an unexpected argument with a stranger about her daughter’s gender.
Reddit user u/ScaredVacation33 asked if she was in the wrong to how she reacted when a stranger demanded she dress her daughter differently, in an argument that ended with expletives being thrown in public.
She explained she was in the store with her young son and 18-month-old daughter, who is “still in that stage where she doesn’t have much hair so it’s kind of hard to tell” whether she’s a boy or a girl.
Her daughter was wearing a blue top, which had bows and the word Princess on it—but an older woman then approached and complimented her “little boys.”
When the mother thanked her and corrected her, saying the youngest was a girl, the woman said that she should “put bows in her hair” so that her gender is obvious to other people.
And when the mom argued back that she didn’t care, and that “nobody needs to know my child’s gender at the end of the day but me,” the woman accused her of being rude—which the mom ignored, until the woman swore at her and she swore back.
As she put it: “She decided to call me a couple names and curse at me which is when I matched energies.”
The mother said she didn’t think much of it, until she was later telling a colleague about the interaction and the colleague said that she was in the wrong for how she reacted.
And so, she put herself on trial via the internet, where users awarded the post almost 7,000 upvotes, and more than 1,000 comments judged the situation.
One user summed up their opinion: “If this is real…your coworker is as weird as that lady.”
“Nobody needs to know a stranger’s kid’s gender and OP wasn’t rude until she got called [a name] first,” another agreed.
“Who cares what some random person thinks? Especially one so obviously irritable,” one said, while one defended the mother even further: “I think it’s weird when people put giant bows or pull what little hair a girl has into pigtails (that prob hurt because they don’t have enough hair so it has to be tight) just so strangers know whether a child is a boy or girl.”
And one put it: “What a weird thing to say to someone upon being corrected. Just go ‘Oh sorry, your son and daughter are cute.'”
Feeling judged is common among parents, with a 2021 global Ipsos survey finding that a majority of parents in each of the 28 countries surveyed feel judged by others at least sometimes.
The poll found that the United States was tied for the worst at feeling judged—92 percent of parents felt judged, tied with Singapore.
At the same time, 89 percent of Americans who did not have a child under the age of 18 admitted to judging parents at least sometimes.
Newsweek has contacted ScaredVacation33 via Reddit for comment on this story.
If you have a similar family dilemma, let us know via [email protected]. We can ask experts for advice, and your story could be featured on Newsweek.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Sirena Bergman and Emma Lee-Sang
Related Articles
