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Family

Woman fights to give her baby a name that her husband says is 'abusive'

Some traditions just don't feel right in 2024.

via Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels

A family fights over a baby name.

When it comes to parenting, the second most important decision—after whether to have a child or not—is choosing a name for the kid. Even though we live in times where parents are getting more and more creative about picking a name for their children, those with a more common name have a greater chance of being socially accepted than those without.

According to Psychology Today, grade-school kids with highly unusual names or names with negative associations tend to be “less popular” than those with more “desirable” names. Later in life, people with “unpopular or unattractive” names have more difficulty finding romantic partners.

A 23-year-old mother-to-be wanted to name her son Gaylord and had her family's full, passionate support, but her husband, 24, and his side of the family were firmly against the idea. The woman was looking for validation and posted about the dilemma on Reddit's AITA forum.

“In my family, our genealogy is extremely important. The firstborn son since the 1800's has been given this name. I'm well aware it's a stigmatized name today, so that's why I have agreed to using a short form,” the woman wrote.

Understanding that her son would be bullied for being called Gaylord, she decided that it would be his legal first name, but could go by Gail. Her family believed that it was acceptable for him to be known as Gail initially, but as society grows more tolerant, will be called Gaylord when he gets older.

“They see the backlash over the name today as a fad that will eventually disappear, and I agree seeing how accepting each generation tends to become,” she continued. “When society stops being so immature about it, he can start using the full name.”

The father wouldn’t even consider naming his son Gaylord, or Gail, for that matter. His family went a step further and said that naming him Gaylord or Gail would be “abusive.”

"My in-laws are telling me that even Gail isn't an acceptable boy's name and that I need to 'get with the times' and choose something more appropriate," she continued. “What happened to respecting our elders and traditions? His family doesn't have any naming traditions, so it should fall to my family that does. How could I be expected to break a centuries-old family tradition?”

The commenters were overwhelmingly against the mother’s decision.

"Use your imagination. A boy named Gaylord goes to his first day of school. The teacher does the roll call. ‘GAYLORD SMITH?’ Class breaks into giggles. Embarrassed boy says, ‘It's Gail.’ Class giggles some more, since Gail is usually a girl's name. Boy has no chance of fitting in with his classmates. His fate is sealed. He is a social pariah for life. Don't do this to him. Please,” one user wrote.

"Your name is the first thing people know about you. It’s the cover page of how people perceive you. Even if you think Gaylord will just appear on the birth certificate, you’re wrong. His legal name will have to be used on official documents, at school, on his license and passport. It will appear at the top of every resume he hands out. It’s not as simple as putting a name on paper. It’s how he is going to appear to the whole world. Gaylord is totally stigmatized and has been for decades. It’s not going away, sorry." Elinbeth added.

“Some traditions reach the point where they are no longer suitable for modern times. This is 100% that time. Pick another name," CashieBashie wrote.

After the post went viral, the mother shared that both sides of the family have tentatively agreed on a name.

“We managed to work out that Gale Gaylord would be a reasonable compromise, with Gale being the complete first name, and Gaylord being the middle name,” the woman wrote. “My husband can then add a second middle name after Gaylord if he wants. Grandpa is especially not impressed that it's being demoted to a middle name, but he did say he understands the pressure I'm facing here.”


This article originally appeared on 2.14.24

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Pop Culture

Teen leaves his tardy parents behind when they refuse to get back to cruise ship on time

Can we really blame him?

Photo credit: Canva

What else was he supposed to do?

Parents, not kids, are the ones making sure that deadlines are met, that everyone gets to important appointments on time, and that things generally run smoothly for the family.

At least…that’s how it’s supposed to work. But many kids find themselves in the precarious situation of having a bit more savviness than their parents. This can be particularly frustrating for young adults when their parents refuse to see them as anything more than a know-nothing child.


For one recent high school grad, that dilemma happened during a cruise to the Caribbean Islands with his punctually challenged mom and dad.

According to his viral Reddit story, the vacation was meant to celebrate his 18th birthday. This would be the family’s first cruise together, and the teenager warned his parents that it would be different than the all inclusive resorts they’re used to going to. That if they went on excursion, they’d have to “follow the schedule no matter what.”

Apparently mom and dad didn’t take the warning to heart, and got “busy shopping and bargaining with the locals.”At a loss, the son said he was heading back to the ship, and his mother waved him off.

AITA for abandoning my parents at an island in the Caribbean so I could get back to our cruise in time?
byu/ProfessionalTax7753 inAmItheAsshole

A good 45 minutes after the departure, the boy’s parents messaged him on WhatsApp, upset that he didn’t get the ship to somehow wait for them.

“I wanted to scream that they were not going to inconvenience 3,998 people because two could not understand what a schedule was,” he lamented in his post.

The parents ended up taking an expensive flight to the next port, and the rest of the trip they took their anger out on the son.

Looking to Reddit for answers, the teens concluded, “I don't know what I was supposed to do. They literally told me that they knew what they were doing.I wish I had never asked for this. They are making me miserable because I left without them.”

Hopefully the overwhelming response in support of the son’s decision made him feel better.

plane passengers

Photo credit: Canva

"Do they think if they arrive late to the airport the plane will wait around for a couple hours? This is not rocket science. It's a mode of transport, you get there on time,” one person commented.

Meanwhile, another reasoned, “This is the bit that baffles me - even if OP had tried/asked, I highly doubt the staff would have even considered delaying departure. Did OP’s parents expect him to kick down the door to the bridge and commandeer the ship until they finished shopping?”

“And if op gave up and stayed behind with them that would have been an extra plane ticket, so even more money down the drain. They should be relieved that their kid has a good head on their shoulders but no, they'd Rather blame them," another person wrote.

One astutely suspected that the boy’s parents were simply projecting their own shame about the situation onto their son, writing “I expect they are just very embarrassed that an 18 year old was smarter than them and are taking it out on them.”

Another person agreed, “Yep, projection is a major defense mechanism for people who never learned emotional regulation skills as children. ‘I messed up and can’t handle/process these feelings of anxiety, so it’s actually all YOUR fault.’”

Seems like the role of adults and child got reversed here, but hopefully this kid can take solace in knowing he made the right decision. And hopefully his parents won’t miss the boat to apologize.

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Family

Mom has the perfect response to teen son who refuses to do 'girl' chores

What exactly are "girl" chores, anyway?

via Krampus Production/Pexels

A boy doing the dishes.

A 41-year-old mom with 3 boys, 12-year-old twins, and a 10-year-old, pays them $10 daily to do their chores. However, their pay is deducted $10 if they miss a day. The boys have to do their tasks 5 days a week, although it doesn’t matter which days they choose to work.

“This system has worked swimmingly for us since it started, the boys have always complied with completing their chores,” the mom wrote on Reddit.

Her 12-year-old son was getting ready to play Fortnite with a friend and told him he’d be ready in 15 minutes once he finished his chores. When the boys started playing the game, he told the friend he was in charge of dusting and sweeping the stairs, to which the friend responded, “It’s a good thing my parents don’t make me do girl chores.”

After learning what the friend said, the mom told her son that chores are genderless.

“I spoke with my son and explained to him that knowing how to clean was not specific to any gender, that it was a life skill everyone needed to know. I also told him that I understood that other families functioned differently; however, in our family, everyone did an equal share,” she wrote.

Over the next 3 days, the boy refused to do his “girl” chores. So, when allowance day came, the two brothers who did theirs received $50, but the 12-year-old who refused only got $20. The mom and the boy's father are divorced, so the 12-year-old called his dad to complain that he got $30 less, and the dad took his side.

“My ex-husband then proceeded to call me and tell me that I’m in the wrong for only giving him $20 and to imagine how it makes him feel that his brothers got more than he did. I explained to him that our other sons actually did their chores for all 5 days, so they were rewarded accordingly,” the mother wrote. “And assured him that if he had decided to start giving the boys an allowance, then he can run allowance however he wanted, but this was ultimately the system I had come up with.”

She added that her husband said she is being “insensitive” and “humiliating” their son.

The mom asked Reddit’s AITA subforum if she was in the wrong, and the commenters unanimously agreed that she was right. Other commenters noted that she made a smart decision leaving her ex-husband because he took the side of his child, who refused to do work for sexist reasons.

The only problem the commenters had was that the mom was being a little too generous by giving them $50 a week. That’s $600 a month for 3 kids.

"It’s the real world, you don’t do your job, you don’t get paid, and I actually think $10 a day is pretty generous for allowance," Longjumping-Gur-6581 wrote. "$10/day is insane for that age,” fIumpf added.

“You’re not taking money out of your son’s allowance, you’re not paying him for services not rendered,” Excitedorca wrote. “The sexist, misogynistic reasons behind not completing the chores need to be corrected and that won’t happen by rewarding it.”


This article originally appeared on 9.22.23

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After his daughter was born with the 'wrong' eye and hair color, a dad demanded a DNA test

Was he right to be skeptical?

via Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels and Anna Shvets/Pexels

Can he be the father?

The presumed father of a newborn baby was skeptical of his paternity after the baby girl was born with blonde hair and blue eyes. He and his wife of two years have brown hair and brown eyes, so he thought there was no chance it was his child.

The wife reassured her husband that they could have a blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby and that, quite often, a baby’s hair and eye color can change over time.

But the husband “freaked out at this and refused to listen,” the wife wrote in a viral post on Reddit’s AITA page. Instead, he “demanded a paternity test and threatened to divorce me if I didn’t comply, so I did.”

The man was so confident that after the baby was born, he moved into his mother’s house while he awaited the results of the DNA test. The wife stayed home with the baby and was helped through the first few weeks by her sister.

To make things worse, the wife’s mother-in-law began to make threats. “My MIL called and informed me that if the paternity test revealed that the child wasn’t his, she would do anything within her power to make sure that I was ‘taken to the cleaners’ during the divorce,” the mom shared on Reddit.

Finally, three weeks after the child was born, the DNA test results arrived and the husband came home to read them with his wife. “I was on the couch in the living room, so he sat next to me and we started to read the results,” she wrote. “They showed that he was the father and my husband had this shocked, kinda mortified look on his face with his eyes wide as he stared at it.”

dad dna test, paternity test, you are the father

A man is shocked to learn that he is the father.

via Mikhail Nilov/Pexels

The wife said, “I told you so,” and laughed in his face. In the post, the wife also notes she has “zero history” of cheating.

Although it is rare for two people with brown eyes and brown hair to have a blue-eyed, blonde-haired baby, it is entirely possible. According to Verywell Health, there is a 19% chance that a couple with brown eyes can have a blue-eyed baby. And, as the wife noted earlier, a baby’s eye color can change over its first year of life.

Further, two people with brown hair can have a blonde-haired child if both parents carry the recessive gene for blonde hair. The blonde hair may darken over time as well.

dna, dna strand, dna test

A strand of DNA

via Warren Umoh/Pexels

If the father had done a quick Google search on the topic, he would have quickly realized that there was a very strong case that he was the father and the drama could have stopped before any damage was done to the marriage.

The positive part of this story is that the wife’s post on Reddit earned her a ton of support from people who thought her husband’s antics were utterly inappropriate. The support probably also helped to put her husband's wild antics into perspective while she determined their future. The wife felt bad about laughing at her husband, but most people thought it was appropriate, given her husband's behavior.

“Not only doesn’t he have a basic grasp of genetics, he threw a tantrum and left you immediately after having the baby to struggle alone for almost a month,” CrystalQueen3000 commented. “He’s lucky all you did was laugh in his face.”

A lot of commenters thought that the woman should leave her husband for accusing her of cheating and leaving her alone with the child.

“Honestly, if my husband left me for weeks after giving birth due to a faint assumption like this, I would be done. I can't be together with someone who abandoned me when I needed them desperately,” Matakakiba wrote.


This article originally appeared on 1.5.24

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