Shocked Mum Annoyed When a Stranger Asked to Cuddle Her Baby – Was She Was Being Unreasonable?
How would you feel if you were approached by a stranger asking to cuddle your baby? Would your first instinct be to hand them over? Or would you feel a little taken aback with such a request?
A mum has taken to popular parenting forum Mumsnet to ask if she was being unreasonable to be annoyed at a worker in a cafe who continually interacted with her eight-month-old son, eventually asking if she could hold him, resulting in the mum feeling rude when she was told no.
The responses from other mums were surprising, ranging from “I’d be livid if this happened to me” to “I don’t see the harm if it brightens someone’s day” and “loads of people just like to hold a baby.”
There are plenty of reasons why a mum wouldn’t want some stranger touching or cuddling their baby. Someone else’s baby is not public property. The infant could be premature, and likely has a weak immune system due to not being old enough to complete a vaccination schedule, leaving them vulnerable to diseases. The baby may not enjoy being handled by strangers, leaving mum trying to calm and console an upset child for no reason other than someone felt entitled to a cuddle. Or the stranger could simply want to harm or kidnap the baby, it’s certainly not unheard of.
Also, the most important reason why a mum might not want a stranger touching or cuddling her child — because it’s her baby and she doesn’t want them to!
The thread was riddled with mums offering examples of their own experiences with well-meaning grannies touching their baby’s faces and asking for cuddles in the supermarket checkout. Plenty of these mums felt bad for not wanting these strangers to touch their child and let them go ahead and do it, while internally fuming and kicking themselves for giving in later.
Those mama instincts can be hard to ignore, but sometimes people are just being nice, and after all, babies are gorgeous smiley little things that make everyone’s day brighter. (Until they aren’t anymore and are screaming their heads off instead!)
It is one thing to offer to help a mum when you think she might need a little assistance, but another entirely to assume that a new mum would be happy to offload her baby to a perfect stranger for a few minutes just so they could get their “baby fix”.
So what do you think? Where do you stand on this?
Would you allow a random stranger in a cafe to hold your child?
Source: Mumsnet
Hell no, no stranger touches me or my baby’s, dont know what they might be carrying or intentions are even if they are innocent, want to prevent anything going wrong and protecting our children is our job… I dont care how I may react to this and wouldn’t feel bad later as long as i can look down and know that because of me this baby is safe, the cafe chick will get over it.
I would never ask to hold someone else’s baby but i may comment on the odd occasion and tell a mum that her baby is adorable etc but would keep a distance so i dont scare mum or baby.
I think the mothers who say they would hand their baby over just so a stranger would get as you are saying ‘their baby hug fix’ should not be mothers.
No. People may not see the harm snd beside the fact of immunisations etc I have older children and teach them stranger danger.. if they see me letting some stranger cuddling a baby they may be more open to cuddling strangers. We teach kids awareness of strangers and even the awareness of people we know. Never have I told them they had to cuddle someone. Mums and dads are an exception. But everyone else they know it’s there choice..
I have been asked this before by a teenager and Before she even asked i knew her behaviour was odd ,LUckily my little one goes into meltdown if anyone she doesnt know picks her up so i politley explained this but it didnt stop her trying or putting her hands out to see if she would reach for her,All i can say is never let anyone you dont know hold your little one one moment and its too late Learn from mums who have gone through terrible experiences by being understandably distracted for a few seconds and lost their little one i would rather be a overprotective and seemly rude mom to strangers than a chilled out one and not have my little one anymore