The moment you have a baby, you also give birth to a thousand unsolicited opinions. Friends, family, and strangers on the internet suddenly become world-renowned experts on everything from sleep training to solid foods. Their advice is usually well-meaning, a helpful little nugget of wisdom.
But sometimes, that well-meaning nugget is actually a lump of confidently incorrect coal. The lecture is delivered with the certainty of a pediatrician, but the facts are all wrong. And when you politely point that out, the argument can take a sudden, sharp turn. One dad recently discovered that correcting his sister's flawed baby advice led to a full-blown accusation of 'mansplaining.'
More info: Reddit
Unsolicited parenting advice is often delivered with the most confidence by those with the least experience
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A dad's childless sister had been insisting for two months that he was feeding his baby all wrong
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The argument came to a head when she claimed babies must have purees and especially not eggs, which in her opinion was a dairy product
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After he corrected her, she accused him of mansplain breastfeeding and turned it into a sexism rampage
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He asserted his stance response he told her she doesn't get a say in how they raise their child
One proud new dad, along with his wife, is practicing a modern approach to feeding their baby. That means no mushy peas, just real food like eggs and avocado, a method their pediatrician fully supports. Their baby is happy, their doctor is happy, but there's one person who is decidedly not happy: the dad's childless sister, the self-appointed baby food police.
For two months, the sister has been on a c*****e, insisting the baby needs to eat baby food. The conflict came to a head in a recent argument where she made a series of confidently incorrect statements, from insisting babies can't skip purees to declaring that eggs are dairy. The dad, armed with pesky little things called "facts," calmly corrected her on all counts.
Having lost the battle of basic food science, the sister deployed her nuclear option. She asked if he, a man, really thought he understood breastfeeding better than her, a woman. When he replied that yes, he probably did, given he's been watching his wife do it for eight months and she has zero experience, she hit him with the final boss of modern arguments: she accused him of "mansplaining."
He finished the conversation by bluntly telling her that she "doesn't get a say" in how they raise their child, a comment she did not appreciate. The OP is left completely baffled, wondering if he's the jerk for being factually correct and setting a firm boundary, or if he committed a grave social sin by daring to know more about his own child's diet than his childless sister.
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The sister's core argument about jarred baby food is factually incorrect and based on outdated information. The World Health Organization (WHO) even recommends breastfeeding for the first six months exclusively, and then to introduce "a variety of adequate, safe and nutrient-dense complementary foods" while breastfeeding continues. There is no required "puree" stage.
This chosen feeding method is a well-known and pediatrician-approved approach called Baby-Led Weaning (BLW). This method skips purees entirely and involves introducing babies to soft, gummable, finger-sized pieces of the same foods the family is eating. The foods the father mentioned are all recommended starting foods for BLW, proving they are following a plan.
The "mansplaining" accusations were a defensive reaction to being corrected. The term "mansplaining" applies when a man condescendingly explains something to a woman who already knows about it. In this case, he was a parent correctly explaining his own child's diet to a childless person who was demonstrably wrong. It's a bizarre, but occasionally true, phenomenon: sometimes, a man can just be... right.
And just to be perfectly, crystal clear, the final nail in the coffin of her argument is the egg issue. We can now officially confirm, with the authority of the U.S. Dairy Council itself, that eggs are, in fact, not dairy.
Do you think this was a typical mansplaining moment worthy of an eye-roll? Let us know in the comments!
The internet overwhelmingly sided with the dad, declaring it wasn't mansplaining, just parenting
