Newsflash: my 9 month old daughter is too young to be dating!
While I realize that people who make these sort of comments are merely trying to be cute, it's irritating. Natalia does not need a "boyfriend", and she is no one's "girlfriend". Granted, there's the term "play date" to consider, but let's be serious. No one is equating a play date with a real date, so why turn an innocent budding friendship into something inappropriate?
There, I said it. I think it's inappropriate to be insinuating romance for a child. Not only does it put children on the spot, it creates an environment where boys and girls can't freely associate with each other as friends without having to worry about their parents or other adults around them calling their interactions "cute" in the sense of "maybe they'll get married someday." I was at the receiving end of such "child matchmaking" a few times.
Sure, it was never an actual attempt at an arranged marriage like is the
tradition in some cultures, but it always made me feel uncomfortable.
Furthermore, making comments about the romantic "availability" of my daughter attempts to force her into a very narrow social role before she even has the chance to learn what all of her options are! For starters, it implies that if she weren't able to attract the opposite sex, she'd be somehow in a "one-down" social position. There is nothing wrong with NOT pairing up as an adult! I don't want my daughter to feel as though she needs to "find Mr. Right" or her life will be wrong. Plenty of women settle for the first guy willing to stick around because of their low self esteem. I want Natalia to know that there is no "better half" out there for her. She is complete all by herself!
And even if she does indeed find a life companion who gives her as much joy as her daddy gives me, who am I to insist that this special person must be a man? God creates a variety of people, and babies are too young for us to know how their romantic lives will play out. I don't want to create an environment in which she feels that unless she is romantically involved with a guy, she cannot discuss her love life with us. We are her parents, and we don't want her to ever feel she needs to hide anything from us.
Something else that most people don't consider - there is such a thing as a religious vocation, meaning it is feasible that God may call her (and she may choose to respond) to the religious celibate life. This is a valid calling, no lesser than the calling to marriage and family life. I will support my daughter either way, because my goal is for her happiness and fulfillment. I am not interested in impressing my peers with pairing her up to some guy that can help her move up the social mobility ladder.
Finally, even if Natalia does grow up to marry a "nice boy" and do all the traditional things society expects, I want her to do so on her own terms, based on what pleases her. I don't want her young impressionable mind to be saturated with thoughts of making herself attractive to potential partners instead of spending her time in fascination of the incredible world around her.
I don't want her to learn at a young age that she is always being observed as a potential mate. Such an awareness comes at a price. I want her to be able to relax around others and be herself, befriend boys and girls, make no distinction between how she presents herself in front of one group versus the other. I want her to be authentic.
I'm all for pretend play, and I understand perfectly that children often play by taking on adult roles, be that by dressing up in a particular career's uniform, or performing certain behaviors they see their parents doing. But when Natalia starts this kind of pretend play, I want her to do so from a clean slate, choosing what she sees as most intriguing about being an adult on any given day and then playing accordingly. I'm not going to narrow this play by encouraging her to wear makeup, nail polish, jewelry, or to have pretend boyfriends. These things go together, in my mind, and they shouldn't be on her horizon until adolescence.
So if you have a little boy around Natalia's age, by all means, let's have a play date! Let's get our kids together and let them enjoy each others' company. But let's not mar their budding friendship by introducing the idea of couple-hood. It's not anything against your little man, who I'm sure is adorable and a joy. It's simply not age appropriate.
