The New Etiquette Rules for All Things Baby
"No gifts" means "no gifts." Offer to help a postpartum mom with chores. And other ways to avoid being a jerk
New York Magazine recently set the internet ablaze with a list of 140 etiquette rules for modern life.
Look: I love New York. I lived there for several years, from Cobble Hill to Greenwood Heights to Bushwick to the East Village to Harlem, and I continue to miss it to this day. It is, however, a provincial town, and if you spend too much time there you become incapable of functioning anywhere else. NYC is a weirdo factory, god bless it.
There are 18 NYMag rules for “Posting and Texting,” and only 8 for “Parenting.” But, you might say, posting and texting norms are changing much more rapidly than parenting norms, hence their preponderance on this list of “new rules.” To that I say: just because something was not invented in the last 30 years doesn’t mean it, too, isn’t rapidly changing. Pregnancy and baby-related etiquette is constantly in flux. Some of those changes can be attributed to technology, others to a younger generation that seems to have higher emotional intelligence and a lower tolerance for assholes than generations prior.
The magazine behind the list has the words “New York” right in the name, and so most of the rules were designed by and for specifically people who live in New York City but misassumed, as people who have lived in New York City for too long tend to, that these rules apply broadly. They don’t. Half of the rules made reasonable sense, but a fair number of them read like they were written by and for residents of another planet.
And what little there was of the “parenting” section, in particular, had me scratching my head and going, what? One particularly inscrutable rule (“Don’t talk shit about your baby”) demanded that “Friend, if I’ve traveled to your inconvenient neighborhood to meet you for dinner, and I ask, “How’s baby?,” I’m going to need you to parry with something better than, “Baby’s fine, boring,” shrug, eye roll.” The rule continues with “I have no babies and a staggeringly privileged life, and I have had an amazing amount of therapy to workshop my feelings around motherhood as a de facto lifestyle. But when you tell me your baby’s fine, it comes off as, “Hey, no offense, but you don’t have a baby, so …” It’s as if you’re implying that I lack patience or compassion; it makes me feel strange and awkward.”
Ah yes. Okay. I’m not trying to be condescending here, but I’ve been on both sides of this interaction, and I have to say that this rule is bad. Raising children can be very boring and when you are around your baby all day, the last thing you want to talk about with friends from your previous child-free life is your baby. By the end of the day of caring for a baby, you have thought all the things that you can possibly thought about your baby, and said all the things you can possibly say.
My take on this rule is that if you are a parent, you should not feel like you’re burdening your childless friends by talking about your children if they ask, but also that if you are the childless friend, you should accept the fact that you are a lifeline to a version of the mom friend’s self who she sometimes feels is lost, and it makes a huge difference to her to have somebody to talk to about something besides her kid.
If a friend without kids visited me and only wanted to talk about the kid, it would make me feel strange and awkward. It would make me feel like the person I was had been erased and replaced by a mom-bot.
This is a case of mismatched expectations that could be solved by the parent saying, simply, that they spend all day talking about their kid and thinking about their kid and worrying about their kid and they really want a break to talk about something else. It’s the same principle as when I know a friend is writing a book or working on a thesis and I ask them about how the big project is going and they get this look on their face like it’s the last thing they want to get into. Am I still curious? Yes! But will I grant my author friend the relief of letting their brain think about something else? Also yes. I wouldn’t dare think, “I came all the way to your house and you won’t even talk about your book!” That’s rude.
And don’t even get me started with rule 120 (“Even when a kids’ party says “no gifts,” you’re supposed to bring a gift.”) Wow, no. Absolutely not. I’ll get into that later.
With that in mind, here are some rules regarding pregnancy, childbirth, and babies that feel more correct to the way we live now.
Pregnancy for the Pregnant
Announce your pregnancy at whatever point in your pregnancy feels right to you. Fuck the old superstition that you must wait until the second trimester to tell people. You can also keep your pregnancy on a strictly need-to-know basis for as long as you want to. Spend your whole pregnancy holding large boxes over your lap and wearing oversized coats. Elaine Benes in the streets, Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the sheets. Your body, your rules.
If you had a miscarriage and would like to talk about it, you can talk about it like you’d talk about any other medical event. If people are uncomfortable with the mention of pregnancy loss, something millions of women deal with every year, that’s their problem.
It is not shameful to have had an abortion, but it’s also not anybody’s business. You are not obligated to keep an abortion a secret if you don’t want to, and nobody is entitled to know if you’ve had one.
Be thoughtful about how you share news of a pregnancy with people you care about who have experienced pregnancy loss, fertility issues, or other trauma around pregnancy, and be prepared for the possibility that your news might be difficult for them to hear. Letting them know over text message or over email gives them the space to process your news before they respond. “Hey, I just wanted to share with you before the news goes wide that I’m pregnant, expecting a baby girl in April. We’re very excited, and I’m looking forward to you meeting her.” is a good place to start. And if a friend who has experienced pregnancy-related trauma pulls back after you share your news, don’t force yourself on her or spam her with pregnancy or birth-related stuff. If your news is too hard for her to process even if you’re careful of her feelings and history, as sad as it is, you just have to let her go until it isn’t painful for her. Not everybody can be Charlotte attending Brady’s first birthday, nor should we expect them to be.
Go hog wild on your baby registry. Register for everything you might need in the baby’s first year of life at many different price points. Shoot for the moon and register for the Nuna rotating car seat! I have a friend who registered for the entire UppaBaby travel system and one of her old bosses bought it for her. Ask for the fancy thing. Somebody might buy it for you!
Be as vague as you want to be. “We’re going to wait and see how everything looks when we get closer to the birth!” is a good way to answer questions about birth plans without having an extremely annoying next ten minutes. If you share with people that you’re trying to have a “natural” childbirth, birthing center birth, or home birth, be prepared for people to be huge assholes about it. If you share with people that you’re planning for a hospital birth and want to utilize all modern medicine has to offer in the way of pain killers, be prepared for people to be huge assholes about it.
The Birth, for Parents
Bring cookies or treats for the L&D nursing staff when you check into the hospital. Not only is it a nice thing to do, it’s so common that if you don’t do it, you’ll be the mom who didn’t bring cookies. I have no idea how it got to be like this, only that it wasn’t like this when I was born and it is now.
Mom (or birthing parent) sets the rules, Dad (or non-birthing parent) enforces the rules. There can be a discussion and perhaps a compromise, but Dad does not get to overrule Mom. She’s the one who is undergoing a medical ordeal and should have the ability to set parameters about who is allowed in her space during the birth and while she recovers. Because baby and mom’s health are intertwined during the first weeks, what is best for Mom is best for everybody. That might mean that Dad has to tell eager family members and visitors to chill out, but it’s a pretty fair trade considering what Mom is going through vis-à-vis her entire torso.
If you’re a new mom and just want visitors to leave your house but they’re not getting the hint, tell everyone that you’re going to feed the baby, and then take the baby with you into another room and close the door and then just stay there until they leave. You can text your partner from in the bedroom if he’s still not picking up on what your putting down.
A postpartum Rosemary entertaining unwanted visitors. / (via Rosemary’s Baby/ Criterion Collection) You don’t need to send physical Thank You cards to people who sent gifts or participated in your meal train, but you do need to thank them somehow. A friendly text message or email will suffice. It’s also nice if you can send them a snapshot of the baby using or wearing the gift they sent.
Using your baby for clout is unethical and unfair to them. I’m not talking about sharing news about what your kid is up to or pictures of them doing cute baby stuff that they’ll one day show their friends in college and be like, “That’s me when I was a baby!” I’m talking about filterlessly sharing things that could be embarrassing to them one day, or could lead to their image being exploited by bad actors. Pictures of medical conditions. Stories of them being specifically and uniquely gross (because every child is specifically and uniquely gross at one time or another). Parts of their bodies they might not want on the internet. Treating them like they do not have any right to privacy because they are children. Your experience and your life is yours to disseminate as you see fit. Your child is a part of your life, but your child is not a part of you. We collectively haven’t figured out where this line is yet in the age of virality, but you should try to figure out what that means for you before a TikTok of your kid with a bad self-administered haircut has gone so viral that it’s being used on bus bench advertisements for flavored soda in Shanghai.
You do not have to respond to any work-related anything during your parental leave. No calls, no emails, no slacks, no nothing.
If you absolutely insist on having a “gender reveal party,” don’t blow anything up, set anything on fire, or involve pyrotechnics.
Pregnancy for People Who Aren’t Pregnant
Unless it’s literally part of job, never ask somebody if they’re pregnant. If they are, they’ll tell you when they’re ready for you to know. If they’re not, you just made it awkward for everybody, maybe forever.
Don’t touch a pregnant woman’s belly unless she invites you to. If you are invited to touch her belly and don’t want to, say you shouldn’t because you’re getting over a cold and move the conversation forward.
Be interested, but don’t get too personal. For example, it’s probably none of your business if the pregnancy was planned or not. If you are not close friends with the pregnant person or their partner, it is weird to ask them if they’re going to breastfeed. For the love of god, don’t ask them if they plan to circumcise their baby. If they want you to know, they’ll tell you.
You get to ask about the baby’s sex, due date, and the name the parents have picked out once. But if the parents say they’re not sharing that information or answer vaguely, do not pry. Don’t try to guess either, unless your guesses are funny.
You don’t have to go to anybody’s gender reveal party if you think it’s a stupid tradition. You should still get them a gift if you’re invited, though.
You might have a crazy or tragic birth story that happened to you or your friend or your mother or whatever, but a pregnant woman or expecting parent is not the correct audience for those stories. Keep it to yourself or tell your therapist.
A pregnancy announcement is not a time to launch into a self-righteous speech about how there are already too many children in foster care/ the world is on fire and so if you ever decide you want kids, you’re just gonna adopt. Say less.
Buy gifts from the registry.
Do not share somebody else’s pregnancy news on social media. Somebody else’s pregnancy should not be used for clout.
Keep your opinions on breastfeeding vs. formula feeding to your damn self.
Send a text message or email a few days after the birth to check and see how the new mom is doing. You’ll probably catch her on a very difficult day, hormonally speaking, and hearing from people who care at that moment will make a huge difference.
Only give advice if asked for it.
Visiting a Brand New Tiny Little Baby
Wash your hands.
Their baby, their rules. Some parents will want visitors to wear masks, or they won’t allow visitors to hold the baby at all. Even if you think they’re going way overboard, there’s no positive outcome to you complaining about this.
Nourishing food is always welcome. However, give them a heads up that you’re bringing over takeout before you arrive and ask if they have any requests.
Don’t kiss the baby or put the baby’s hands or feet in your mouth. Newborns don’t have immune systems. Eventually they’ll develop one and do things like feed themselves fistfuls of dirt without getting sick, but for the first few months all they’ve got is whatever they’re getting from breast milk (if they’re breast feeding).
Post carefully. Ask permission before posting any photos of the baby to social media (even private accounts). Don’t do that thing where you post the baby’s first, middle, and last name, place of birth, time of birth, and birth weight on Facebook or Instagram. It’s absurdly easy to steal a baby’s identity with little more than that information. The baby can’t even focus on faraway objects yet and you’re out here ruining its credit.
Don’t visit a newborn baby if you’re even a little bit sick. Even if it’s your grandchild. Even if it’s your best friend’s baby. Even if you made a special trip. Now is not the time to be catastrophically selfish.
Cap social visits to two hours tops unless asked to stay longer, and never drop by unannounced. When the baby is no longer a newborn, you’ll be able to spend more time around them without bumping up against naptimes and feeding times and the 15 minute window in the day when it’s possible for Mom to take a shower.
Do not expect to be waited on by the woman who just gave birth. Would you show up to somebody’s house after they had a heart attack or an appendectomy and expect them to entertain you? Then stop doing this to new mothers. Help out or get out.
Let the baby sleep.
Always ask before picking up the baby. Always hand the baby back if either parent asks for the baby.
“You look great!” or better yet “You’re doing great!” are nice things to say to a new mom.
When the mother gets up and takes the baby into another room and closes the door and doesn’t come back out, that’s your cue to leave.
You don’t need to visit when the baby is a newborn. Newborns are boring and have no clue what’s going on. The parents will be very tired. Around three months things tend to take a turn. In most circumstances, it’s totally okay to wait until then, the parents will not think you’re a bad friend.
If somebody is breastfeeding in public, don’t stare. And don’t offer them advice, my god.
Work
When your employee is on maternity leave, they are not available to you. Send them a congratulations or say nothing.
Do not complain about a coworker needing to pump breast milk. Trust me, she’d rather she didn’t need to pump, too. If it annoys you, keep it to yourself and use that extra time you get by shutting up to focus on being less of a dick.
“How was your vacation?” is not an appropriate question to ask a coworker who is returning from parental leave. Unless you’re doing it mega-sarcastically and you and said coworker are on that level.
And finally…
If the invitation to the birthday party of a child says “no gifts,” that means “do not bring a gift.” The words mean what the words mean. To pretend otherwise is fucking absurd. That leaves parents no way to ask people to stop giving them stuff! It’s insanity! The baby is not a tiny god that must be appeased by annual sun return offerings lest it angrily smite the unfaithful.
If you’re a parent living in an insane world where “do not bring a gift” means “you better bring a gift,” and your small house is stuffed full of enough toys for the baby to play with hourly for the rest of their childhood and not have any repeats, try to drive the point home further by putting “All gifts will be donated to charity” on invitations and let me know if that works.
I think the bring cookies/treats to L&D is a nice suggestion, but not a rule. It was certainly not the norm at my NYC hospital and not really possible nor on my mind when my water was breaking at 4AM two weeks early.
The other rule I would contribute is "Still invite your parent friends to events and outings, even if you know they likely will not attend. While bedtimes and parenthood obligations make going out past 7pm difficult, we don't want to be completely cut off from our old life and will appreciate having the option to go and hire a babysitter or have one parent go out and the other stay home with the child. Let your friend tell you to stop inviting them vs. assuming they can't or won't want to go."
Don’t tell a postpartum mom how you “bounced back” after your pregnancy (especially when they clearly haven’t yet…) :(