Wife Threatens To Ban Husband From Delivery Room If He Doesn’t Give Their Baby A Gender-Neutral Name
Seems a little bit over the top.
Yulyazolotko / Shutterstock A man having tensions with his wife over her desire to name their baby a gender-neutral name posted his experience on r/AmItheA**hole (AITA) in hopes of gaining the Internet’s perspective of the situation.
The subreddit allow people to offer advice and declare whether or not other Redditors are in the wrong in their personal lives.
The father-to-be is at odds with his wife over their baby's gender-neutral name.
The man and his wife, both 27, have been together for eight years and married for two. The pair are expecting their first child in June. He says they have talked about having kids before and the logistics behind it, but names were never an issue for them.
That is until they found out their baby’s sex.
His leading choice for a name was Juliet, with Orion, Violet, Scarlet, and Dakota as other options, but his wife had other ideas.
She wanted to give their child a gender-neutral name, such as Hunter, Scout, Payton, Rory, Morgan, and Kai, in case she decided to transition from female to male. He felt that her thought process didn’t add up.
“I mentioned to her that most people who transition end up changing their names to one they identify with so even if we were to give them a gender-neutral name they might end up changing it,” he wrote.
“I also mentioned some people change their names just because, my grandma being one of those people and I used her as an example but she won’t budge.”
She was so adamant about her choice that she threatened to leave him out of the delivery room if he didn’t agree.
He also writes that the mom-to-be said she "will tell nurses and doctors beforehand to not ask me for the baby’s information for the birth certificate."
At a loss for what to do, the man poses the question of if he was the a**hole to the readers.
Fortunately for him, commenters agreed that he was not the a**hole (NTA).
Most people agreed with the man’s point that most people who transition end up changing their name.
“Take it from a trans person, your wife is very much overthinking this,” the top commenter wrote. “Your kid can always change her name whenever she feels like it, so picking a name to be gender neutral won't actually matter that much.”
Another common point among commenters is how they believed the wife to be overreacting over something that is very unlikely to happen, and would be years down the road if it did. Some suggested that the wife is placing her own desires onto her child.
“I think some serious counseling should be in order because I personally would be worried about her projecting something she wants onto your child,” another top commenter wrote.
“Some parents think they are being helpful by guiding a child from an early age to not identify with their gender, that is no more helpful than forcing a female who prefers pants, short hair and no make up into dresses and highlights. This is an actual issue that needs to be addressed before the child is born.”
Naming a baby is definitely an issue that both parents need to agree upon, but it also needs to be done with the best interests of the kid in mind, and basing the name on an extremely unlikely scenario is one way not to do that.
Jonathan Alfano is a writer who focuses on news and entertainment topics. He majors in journalism at the University of Central Florida with a minor in sports business. Follow him on Twitter.