“Don’t you just want to make out with your baby?”
I was at a new-mom group with my then-6-week-old daughter, Lucy, when another mom sat down next to me. As if to prove her point, she puckered her lips and kissed her confused-looking infant son on the mouth.
Even in those early days I was confident enough in my parenting to know that Lucy would get by just fine with cheek kisses. But what I didn’t realize is just how many moms are in the lips camp.
Recently, “Younger” actress Hilary Duff came under fire for posting a photo on Instagram of her kissing her 4-year-old son, Luca, on the lips at Disneyland. Duff fired back at her critics by saying, “For anyone commenting that a kiss on the lips with my four year old is ‘inappropriate’ go ahead and click a quick unfollow with your warped minds and judgment.”
The reason I find it icky isn’t “warped” - I’m not against lip kissing because I think it’s incestuous. I’m partly against it because it’s unhygienic. Did you know cavities can be spread by kissing? As someone who’s spent a lot of time at the dentist’s office, I’d rather not up Lucy’s odds.
But the real reason is because it’s just another example of how my generation of parents have made children the center of their world.
To me, lip kissing implies a chosen love, whether it’s the intimate bisou between friends or a passionate moment with a partner. And for so many modern parents, this is what kids have become: Instead of children, they have been thrust into a position of parent contemporary, expected to handle the complex needs of adulthood.
One of my friends tells her son that no one in the world will ever love him more than she does. She thinks it’s sweet; I think it’s a terrifying worldview for her son to have. How could you explore the concept of love if you think you’ve already experienced its apex at age 2?
And that’s why I don’t kiss Lucy on the lips. It’s because I want that kiss, when it comes, to be hers: knee-buckling and exciting and singular. And that, to me, is worth the future cavity risk.
- Pro lip-kisser:
There’s one advantage to not being a beautiful young actress - you can kiss your kids on the lips without being vilified online. I regularly plant smackers on the mouths of my 6-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter. Far from being sexual, it’s a way of expressing affection. Before I had kids, I too thought it was a bit icky. But now, it feels like the most natural thing in the world. As soon as my kids start to feel uncomfortable about it, I’ll stop.
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