I Flipped Out on My MIL After She Said My 4-Year-Old Daughter Doesn’t Have a ‘Real Vagina’

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We all know it takes a village to raise a child. But sometimes members of the village come with problematic ideologies and misinformation. And while parents need all of the help they can get, sometimes doing damage control afterward makes that help feel more like a burden.

That’s what happened to one father whose mother-in-law not only improperly wiped his daughter after she used the toilet, but then immediately spouted some utterly ridiculous information after the fact. He wrote about the bizarre encounter on Reddit.

A man wondered if he was out of line for speaking to his MIL the way he did.

A husband asked the Reddit AITA community if he was the a–hole for a tense exchange he had with his mother-in-law. His MIL came to provide some assistance while his 4 1/2-year-old daughter was fighting a stomach bug. Like with most stomach bugs, the girl’s symptoms included diarrhea.

While the little girl knows how to wipe herself, the family was giving her additional help to make sure she was able to clean up properly while she was sick. That’s where grandma came in. But instead of helping, she seemed to make things worse.

The issue began with a discussion about wiping.

The OP’s daughter came up to him and asked him to wipe her after she’d already come from the bathroom with grandma.

“I said to her, didn't Grandma help you?” the OP asked his child. “She said yes, but Grandma wiped wrong. She said Grandma wiped in instead of out. (We've taught her to wipe out instead of in),” he explained. The OP excused himself from his meeting, wiped his daughter correctly and then went to find his MIL.

The OP's MIL told him his daughter didn't have a 'real vagina' yet.

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“I asked her, [daughter] says you wiped in instead of out?” the OP wrote. “She said, ‘I wiped her, you think there's a better way?’ I told her it's not healthy to wipe into the vagina, you need to wipe out. She said, ‘and you have a vagina?’ I said no, but I have a daughter, and I won't let her get an infection by wiping poop into her vagina.”

That’s when things got … weird. The MIL told the OP that his daughter “doesn’t have a real vagina yet” so there’s no chance of infecting anything. The OP assured his MIL that his daughter does indeed have a real vagina.

His MIL said, “Girls don't have real vaginas until they’re teenagers. And that there's no chance of any infection because their vagina doesn't actually develop until they're a teenager.”

After his initial confusion, OP lost it.

The OP said he was dumbfounded. And then he got angry. In his frustration, he said, “You're a woman, you raised three daughters, I'm married to one … you can't possibly be this stupid?"

The MIL said OP was out of line. She said if he didn’t appreciate her help then she was going to leave. He told her she was “welcome to get out.” She left. Ten minutes later, OP’s wife called him. She told him that her mom was furious. But after he explained, his wife was completely on his side.

Many people thought OP did the right thing.

Reddit users were on OP’s side.

“Infections only happen after puberty is such a dumb take I'm shocked your wife made it to adulthood,” one user wrote.

Someone else argued that he did what needed to be done for the welfare of his child. “If some people need to be told to f— off to keep your kid safe then buckle up cause here comes the the F storm,” the Redditor wrote.

Another person showed genuine concern: “Could your MIL be suffering from some sort of illness like dementia or something along those lines? This seems very odd.”

Very odd, indeed. We're just glad this little girl has a dad who knows what's what.