A mom is furious with her husband after he hit the ceiling over her painting her kids’ fingernails — and especially that she would include their son. The dad argued that kids should not be wearing nail polish and that it was a “slippery slope” for their twins to get into makeup. But the mom disagreed. “I argued back that the slippery slope argument is (expletive),” she wrote.
The mom of toddler boy and girl twins explained that her kids have recently gotten into nail polish, much to her husband's upset.
Although her twins are only 3 years old, the mom wrote on Reddit that they’ve both become curious about nail polish. At first it was only her daughter who wanted to paint her nails, but her husband told her “he thinks make-up is weird and adult-looking on a toddler.”
“I argued that she just likes the color and it’s fairly normal for a toddler to have painted nails,” she shot back.
He really flipped his lid when the mom decided to let her boy get in on the fun and paint his nails as well. “John freaked out and demanded that the polish was taken off,” she wrote.
Her husband had several arguments for why his kids shouldn't be allowed to put polish on their nails, but the mom doesn't agree with them.
During their argument, the dad made several points why neither of their kids should wear nail polish, including that “It’s a slippery slope from nail polish to a full face with foundation, lipstick and eyeliner,” and “Women only wear nail polish to make themselves more attractive to men, therefore I am trying to make our kid attractive,” and he was worried that their son would be bullied at nursery school.
The mom shot back that his points were seriously wrong, but said he could remove the nail polish from their son’s fingers anyway.
“John said that I was forcing him to be the bad guy and he wasn’t going to do that, so our son has pink fingernails and my husband is not happy,” she added. Was she wrong “for making my husband the (potential) bad guy?”
People online have strong feelings, and many believe her husband was being both homophobic and misogynistic.
“It’s just nail polish, it comes off easily,” one commenter wrote. “If the boy wants painted nails, it’s not hurting anyone. I don’t think it’s a slippery slope towards more makeup either — it’s just allowing kids to have fun colors on their fingernails. Your husband is making himself be that bad guy by wanting to enforce no painted nails since he’s so weirded out by it.
“If your husband is often so misogynistic, I suggest therapy. Or maybe tell him pink was historically the color for little boys.”
“As a woman who loves to paint her nails I can say I never, and I really mean NEVER do it to make myself more attractive to men,” another woman added. “Or to women. Other people and what they may think about my hands never even enters my mind. I paint my nails because I like the way it looks. And if I’m being completely honest because I like how smooth it makes my fingernails feel.”
“You are not forcing him to be the bad guy,” a third commenter agreed.
“He is the ‘bad guy’ if by bad you mean ‘disappointing a child because he’s an uptight homophobe.’”
Some others agreed that her husband has the boy's best interest at heart.
“He’s right, if your son goes out like that in public he’ll more than likely be brutally bullied,” a commenter explained. “But at the same time I don’t see a problem with him being the one to tell the kid no as long as you back him up. If you’re saying stuff like ‘well I would do it but daddy won’t let me’ then you’re the (expletive).”
“He is worrying about what other people will say about your kid when they see him with painted nails,” someone else agreed. “You have good intentions for you kid so he can experiment with ‘feminine products’ as well. Both of you make valid points. Also maybe it’s just me, but telling your child that they shouldn’t care about what other people think of him is nice, but it can lead him to do things that will result with him being bullied by other kids.”
And a third person didn’t mince words. “You should be on the same page when it comes to parenting. It’s totally unfair of you to hang him out to dry like this,” the commenter wrote.
The mom later wrote that she and her husband decided to remove the nail polish because they were visiting his father in the hospital and “he will definitely make homophobic comments about it.”
She was dismayed, however, by some of the reactions. “The amount of anger in many responses is peculiar and the suggestion that only people with the right attitudes should have kids is … disturbing.”
She somewhat defending her man, saying, “My husband has a (expletive) up understanding of sexuality, passed down from his abused, oppressed and repressive parents. They had him late in life so they are closer in age to the grandparents of my generation than the parents. We are not going to change them but we can and will work on ourselves.”
She added, “I’ve always been aware that I’m more liberal than my husband but our differences are deeper than I thought so we have a lot of talking to do.”
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