What to Know
At this point, celebrity moms are probably pretty used to their choices being dissected on social media, but Shawn Johnson may not have seen a massive debate like this one coming when she shared a sweet moment with her toddler over the holiday weekend. A video she posted on Instagram showed 2-year-old Barrett grabbing his mom’s face and giving her a big smooch right on the lips, and oh boy, do people have opinions of all kinds on this.
Shawn shared footage from her 4th of July celebrations.
In the video, she and Barrett are out on the water in a boat as he sits on his mom’s lap. Suddenly, he leans in and gives his mom a long kiss on the lips, holding her face in place with both hands.
As soon as he pulls away, everyone around him cheers before he goes in for another kiss, and it sounds like dad Andrew East is in the background cracking up. Meanwhile, Shawn has a huge smile on her face.
“What a smooch!! Hahahaha this guy came outta nowhere!!” Shawn wrote in her caption.
Some people think it’s super inappropriate to kiss your children on the lips.
In case you didn’t know, children kissing their moms on the lips is a very controversial topic on social media, and the comments on Shawn’s post really prove it.
“Pecks are one thing… Only Dad should be kissing mom like that,” one commenter wrote.
Another person said that kisses on the mouth are fine, but kisses that last this long are not. “I do kiss my son on the lips but when he wants to do a ‘long kiss’ like Daddy I say ‘no that’s only for grown ups when they get married’ as I feel for me personally it becomes a bit inappropriate, but each to their own,” a fellow mom wrote.
Others claim that anyone who isn’t a “boy mom” simply won’t understand.
The “boy mom” commenters are all very defensive of Shawn here. One wrote, “Only boy moms will understand how precious those kisses are!!! My second born never misses an opportunity!!”
Another swore she never understood these mouth kisses until she experienced them with her own little boy: “I used to think this was kind of odd. Now I have a two-year-old son and it is literally my favorite thing in the world. I feel so loved by him!”
Boy mom or not, it doesn’t matter what strangers on the internet feel is inappropriate — some moms are going to be comfortable receiving this kind of affection from their toddlers and some are not. Both are okay.
Besides, all kids, including Barrett, will grow out of wanting to lay a big smooch on their moms eventually. In a couple of years, she’ll be lucky if she can get him to stop running around long enough to give her a proper hug!
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