I'm Not A Pedophile, I'm A Parent!
The other day, while eating lunch by myself in the food court of our local mall (not normally something I do, but I had missed a lunch meeting nearby and had a craving for Rubio's,) I was "people-watching" while I ate.
As I was looking around at the many families with small children that tend to occupy the mall in the middle of the day on a weekday, a woman pushed an infant carrier/stroller over to the table next to me, sat down, and started playing with her baby.
Now, since becoming a parent last year, I have noticed two things about babies/children in public:
1) They seem to be everywhere now, as if they weren't before. It seems to be the same effect that happens as soon as you buy a "unique" car, thinking that you don't see many on the road, only to find that every other car on the road is the same as yours.
2) I like them a lot more than before. Prior to parenthood, I had no emotion toward babies or children. It wasn't that I didn't like them, or dislike them, it was just that I was "baby neutral" without feelings in either direction toward them. Now, it's as if a switch was flipped in my head, and I find children facinating to watch, not in a weird way, but in awe of how amazing children and babies really are.
And, as I have learned is common practice in the parenting world when someone pushes a stroller by you, whether out of legitimate interest or to secretly compare how cute someone else's child is versus our own, it is normal to look at the baby inside of the stroller.
So, as the woman sat down next to me, I looked over at the baby in the stroller that had just rolled by me. When I saw that the baby inside was a cute (but not as cute as my own) little girl, of about six to eight weeks, I smiled.
Unfortunately, it seems, my innocent gesture was misconstrued by the new mother who, upon catching my gaze while I smiled at her daughter, immediately turned the stroller so that her baby was not facing me, as a look of concern swept across her face.
Uh...what just happened?
Did I somehow offend her by smiling at her child? (Or was it that she had somehow read my mind to discover that I thought my daughter was cuter than hers?) What exactly did she think I was thinking? Would her reaction have been the same had I not been alone? Did I not get the memo that said smiling at babies isn't ok anymore?
Now, I'm not the best person to talk to about parent-to-parent etiquette. When someone, holding a baby of their own, tells me how beautiful my daughter is I simply say "thank you" and go about whatever I was doing, without complimenting them on their child (that they seemed to be fishing for compliments for.) When the same parent tries to continue the conversation with me by asking how old my daughter is, I tell them her age, and continue about my way, not asking the age of their child. (Mostly, because I really don't care.)
My wife has scolded me on several occasions for my parental etiquette "faux pas", and reminds me that the polite thing to do is to ask about the other person's child. (Even if I really don't care how old their kid is!)
However, the one bit of parental etiquette that I do know and follow is that it is polite to smile at children, especially if they smile at you first, and if the occasion permits it, one can even wave or make a face at the child.
But, maybe I am wrong.
Being a new parent myself, I know all too well the paranoia that comes with the territory. And, every news story of an abducted child, or my personal (least) favorite: stories about people using information and pictures of children found on people's Facebook pages to do everything from cyber-stalking to adoption scams, all seem to provide the justification to treat every "stranger" as a potential threat.
Furthermore, I can appreciate that a lone man (albeit, a well-dressed and clean-cut man) can be viewed as a potential "weirdo", so maybe I'm just offended that someone would react that way to me, a father, smiling at a baby.
Was I in the wrong there? Did the mom overreact, or am I the one being ridiculous? Should I keep my eyes to myself when I'm by myself, unless accompanied by my wife or daughter?
