Is it weird for parents to kiss their kids on the lips? It probably depends on who you ask. One grandmother wrote into an advice column because she noticed that her son-in-law and her granddaughter “hugged and kissed a lot.” She even saw the dad kissing his daughter on the lips. To her, the amount of affection between the dad and his daughter seems abnormal. Although she admitted that it does seem ‘normal and happy’ for them, it makes her “uncomfortable.”
The concerned grandmother submitted her question to The Telegraph‘s Ask Richard column. The mother-in-law described spending the holidays with her daughter and son-in-law and noticing that her son-in-law and his 7-year-old daughter were pretty affectionate with each other. She said the amount of affection seemed “much more than you would expect in a normal affectionate family scenario,” especially because “they even kissed on the lips frequently.”
The mother spoke to her daughter about it.
She didn’t say exactly how she approached the conversation with her daughter, but said her daughter was “furious” when she brought it up. The mother worried, however, that her daughter might be “in denial” because “she adores her husband.” The mother asked columnist Richard Madeley if her level of concern seemed normal or if she was simply “being old-fashioned.”
Richard told her it’s hard to say.
When it comes to whether or not a dad kissing his child on the lips is “normal,” it depends. Writing back to the woman, Richard told her that she might not have anything to worry about. He noted that he still hugs and kisses his adult children. The advice columnist went on to say that kissing on the lips is probably “far more common between fathers and their children than you might believe.”
However, he didn’t want to be ‘dismissive.’
He also acknowledged that it’s hard to know what’s really happening from a short description. “We all know how child abuse thrives on silence,” he pointed out. At the same time, he added that it’s “reassuring” that the woman’s granddaughter didn’t seem uncomfortable, and the girl’s mother also didn’t seem to have a problem with what was happening.
Still, he urged her to think about why exactly the behavior seemed concerning to her.
“I think the real question to ask yourself, Nana, is this: why are you suspicious of your son-in-law? Is there something you’re not telling me?” he wrote. He suggested that her concern could also be because of her “own upbringing” or her “relationship with (her) son-in-law.”
Many others have weighed in on this topic, and they also think it depends.
“Nana” is not the first person to have this concern. There are countless threads on Reddit in which people have asked if it’s appropriate to kiss your children on the lips, and there is no general consensus. Some people associate kissing on the lips with romance, so they find it strange to kiss their children there. At the same time, though, others think it’s totally fine.
“I grew up the same that kissing on the lips is a romantic gesture and honestly when I see parents kissing their kids on the lips I think it’s weird,” one person wrote on Reddit.
However, another person wrote, “I am a 40-year-old woman who still kisses both her parents on the lips when I see them and say goodbye. Maybe it’s ‘weird,’ but it doesn’t feel so to me.”
A third person commented, “I don’t think it’s weird unless you make it weird.”
