Why is it anyone’s business that Tom Brady loves his son’s kisses?
Hating Tom Brady is a sport in itself, especially in New York. The quarterback for the New England Patriots is one of only two players to win five Super Bowls, is married to a supermodel and has more money than God.
In a new Facebook docu-series “Tom vs. Time,” tongues are wagging about a scene between the footballer and his 11-year-old son. While Brady was receiving a massage, his son walked in and asked if he could check his fantasy football rankings. In exchange for being allowed to do so, Brady asked his son for a kiss. The first was “just a peck” and Brady teased him, asking for a second, before acquiescing.
As they are wont to do, people immediately had opinions. The comments on the Facebook video lit up, and after the video aired, CBS2 did some “man on the street” interviews with New Yorkers to get their takes. CBS reported, “Of the people who spoke to CBS2, no one questioned Brady’s intentions toward his child. But they did seem to question the message he’s sending with his actions.”
A series of experts went on to question Brady as a parent, and criticize the wisdom of asking for physical affection in exchange for something a child wanted, especially when it is a kiss on the mouth between a father and a son. The kiss raised questions about how much physical affection is too much; others questioned if we are perhaps uncomfortable with any affection between men, even a father and a son.
Here’s the important line from that CBS story, however: “No one questioned Brady’s intentions toward his child.” Meaning: Nobody thinks Brady is in any way abusive of his son, nor that his child is in danger in any way.
This is an entire national conversation about a particular aspect of Brady’s parenting style in a home we can only assume, especially based on the glimpses in the docu-series, is filled with love, attention and the best medical care and education money can buy.
So why is it we feel the need to dissect and analyze Brady’s parenting based on less than a minute of him and his son together on camera?
The phenomenon of judging a parent’s ability to raise their child based on a few seconds of observation isn’t just limited to celebrities. Anyone raising a kid can tell you: Plenty of strangers have plenty of thoughts about how you’re parenting at any given moment while in public.
From the sideways glances to the disapproving looks to people actually commenting aloud, it feels as though everyone has an opinion about how parents are handling everyday interactions with their offspring. And few are shy about sharing them.
Since the invention of social media and cellphone cameras, the practice has gone digital. A bystander records a video and soon, hundreds, thousands, even millions of people are weighing in and debating. From the parents who left a car seat a few feet away to go to the buffet at a restaurant to countless autistic kids having meltdowns in public (the caption to the video always refers to an “out of control” child) to the dad whose child was “kidnapped” in front of him at the play while he was on the phone — if you’re on Facebook, chances are you’ve seen one of these videos over the years.
Videos of 15 second glimpses into a parent’s life abound on the Internet, and soon, the comments begin to roll in about how they’re doing it right, but most often, wrong.
And it’s time for parents to just say: Enough.
From Tom Brady to the parents at the buffet, we’ve have had it with strangers passing judgment on how we’re doing our jobs.
We get it: You don’t kiss your children on the mouth, you may not want to be more than five feet away from them in public, you don’t understand what it’s like handling a child with special needs, who appears to be “out of control” all the time. Here’s the great thing: It’s not your problem.
If we’re not asking you to clean vomit out of blankets at 3 a.m., start a college fund or buy blueberries in January, our children are not your concern. If you see something you don’t agree with, but not call-911-worthy, move along; or better yet, offer to help. You don’t think parents should leave a baby at a buffet for a few minutes to grab a salad? Ask the parents if they’d like you to keep an eye on the car seat while they’re gone.
And if you don’t like Tom Brady (who does?), feel free to root against the Patriots, as every New Yorker should be. And if you don’t like how he kisses his son, don’t do it with your own.