(Closed) Have some tact, yes he is MINE! (Vent)

• pocketfox
• 7 years ago

@babypearls:  Honestly, I think people just want to check without making assumptions, which can be a lot worse. I’m about as pale as they come, and I was babysitting this 8 year old boy when I was 16 (I looked about 24-25 at the time though). I got the dirtiest looks from a bunch of people who assumed I was his mom. And this was in one of the more culturally diverse areas in my city!

• BOGB
• 7 years ago

• Wedding: August 2012

I’m half korean and half black and this happened to my korean mother all the time. The worst was when people would tell me my babysitter was here when she picked me up from school. I’m sorry that people have such little tact. I have to believe they just don’t know how insulting it comes off. Congrats on your little one!

• Hippos
• 7 years ago

• Wedding: May 2012

Yea I can see how that can get annoying and abit offensive! My mom is white and my dad is Chinese and lets just say back in the 80’s my mother was asked many times if I was adopted since I looked so Chinese when I was younger. Looking back she understood since mixed raced couples weren’t as common as they are today, but in today’s world that sucks that you are running into it!

• JerNCher
• 7 years ago

• Wedding: November 2014

This happened to my mother all the time with my little sister. My parents are an interracial couple as she is black and my father is Puerto Rican. My father is the typical Hispanic tan/beige or whathave you and my sister was born…well we called he “yellow”.lol very light,very.she looked like a little Asian baby with jet black hair,super light skin and squinty little eyes. People would ask my mom if she was babysitting and asking for her prices. People would make comments about the daddy(our day) stepping up and taking anothers man responsibility(I am more brown and its just not possible for two children with the same parents to be different colors!),people were really rude to my mother but that was the early 90’s. You would really think that people wouldn’t be so stupid and closed minded. Oh,and now my sister has a daughter who was born brown(she’s 3/4 as and 1/4black so yeah she’s brown) and my sister gets asked that also. Or if I’m with them they assumes she is my daughter. Its crazy!

• Sunshine09
• 7 years ago

• Wedding: August 2012

@babypearls:  I bet you and your baby make a gorgeous pair, I loooove mixed race babies!

If it makes you feel any better, I got asked at 2 weeks if my baby was mine, bc I dropped all the baby stomach right away and look young to start with. So that’s another kind way to feel insulted about the same thing. People are just people, they don’t always mean harm or have a filter. 

• kate02121
• 7 years ago

• Wedding: August 2012

First, congrats!! 

I understand that people can be totally tactless and rude, but I’m sort of in the camp of 

@This Time Round: I try to be super careful, but I have my niece with me frequently (who, granted, does look like she could be mine) and people always assume she’s mine. It doesn’t bother me in the least, but it does make me conscious of the fact that just because someone is holding a baby doesn’t mean the baby is theirs. 

You definitely had the benefit of reading their body language of the women at the mall, but just MAYBE it’s possible that they didn’t mean it in the way you took it. 

• MrsPanda99
• 7 years ago

@This Time Round:  +1, exactly. I used to be a nanny and I never cared if people asked if the kids were mine – they weren’t! People ask if my nieces and nephews are mine too and they do look like me. I wouldn’t be fussed about strangers’ questions. 

• Ninteenthchance
• 7 years ago

@babypearls:  honestly people ask me all the time if my daughter is mine and we look alike. 

• melitabonita
• 7 years ago

• Wedding: November 2013

My sister’s husband is Korean (She is very very white, alabaster would be the best way to describe her skin lol) and her oldest son looks very much like his father and when he was a baby she had someone ask if he was adopted. Her youngest son favors her a lot more but has a darker skin color and someone actually accused her of letting her baby get too much sun!

• TaurianDoll
• 7 years ago

• Wedding: August 2013

@babypearls:  people are stupid. and you wouldn‘t believe the number of people that don‘t know that non white babies gain more melanin as time passes. i was talking to someone at work with a PhD…WITH A PhD…and she didn‘t know that black babies are born with a really light complexion. she was in shock. it‘s fine if people don‘t know, but to say something is just….*sigh* that‘s what google is for, folks.

• CakeyP
• 7 years ago

• Wedding: March 2014

I feel like I’d just stop talking to someone like that and glare (and I’m sure I’ll get those comments someday, too; sigh)
OR I’d be tempted to tell her that no, I just stole it from someone.
Or bought it off of a woman who had just had enough of parenting.

But I also feel like it’s one of those stupid questions people ask about babies… like when they ask whether it’s a boy or a girl, or ask the baby directly what their name is (he may be 10 months but that doesn’t mean he can talk). It’s just something that people with no filter can’t seem to control. :/

• Moonbear17
• 7 years ago

@babypearls:  this happens with my daughter a lot. I’m white and she is half chinese, and I’ve had people assume she isn’t mine or that she is adopted. I probably get the adopted one the most, and I do actually find it a little offensive that people are more quick to assume that I had adopted an asian baby rather than having a baby with an asian man, but I don’t let it bother me. Also my sisters girlfriend is chinese and when we all go out to eat the waitress  always asks her what my daughter wants to eat, even though she is never sitting next to her! It just doesn’t compute for some people that it is possible to have a baby that isn’t the same race as you. I think on some level it is normal for people to ask if a baby is yours, but it can feel really shitty when it happens all of the time. I think that people who haven’t been in that situation don’t really understand how it feels. 

• megz06
• 7 years ago

• Wedding: July 2012

@babypearls:  That’s just rude, and even if your baby was adopted or what not, he would still be YOURS. People ask the stupidest questions without thinking.

• Jijitattoo
• 7 years ago

@babypearls:  I can imagine that that would be so annoying and frustrating! Maybe it would help to come up with a stock response that you can memorize and repeat? Something like, “Oh wow, did you really just say that out loud? Yes, of course he’s mine. You might want to think about taking a class in genetics.”

• Bubbles42
• 7 years ago

• Wedding: March 2014

My first thought was maybe they thought you were an aunt or babysitter.