Yes, Virginia, You Do Have to Hug Grandma This Christmas

Here come the holidays, and if you are a child, that means here come all the grandparents, uncles, and aunties who want your Christmas hugs and maybe even kisses! But what if Grandpa smells like mothballs in his old sportscoat, which is kind of icky? Or maybe Great-Aunt Ruth has a beard, and it feels weird! Aunt Julie smells like vanilla and cinnamon, so she might be okay to hug if you feel like it—but as for Uncle Jack, perhaps you would rather just grab the present from his hands and go play. You should be able to do just that—right? After all, you have bodily autonomy.

What is wrong with this picture? According to the parents in a recent Atlantic article, absolutely nothing. This popular aspect of gentle parenting holds that a child should be taught that he or she never has to give a hug unless desired. “By teaching children that they can choose whom they hug," the article explains, "parents hope to instill in them a sense of agency, and remind them that consent matters, both for themselves and for other people.” 

It’s a matter of consent! And with the invocation of this buzzword—the golden calf of all social interaction these days—the conversation is closed. The only thing that remains is to educate the grandparents, because (as the article puts it), “Most grandparents want to do what’s best for their grandkids, but they don’t always know what that is.”

I agree that children should not be forced to hug strangers or each and every family member on demand. But teaching them that touch (and physical affection with family) is mainly about control and desire may not really be what’s best for kids, either. There’s a difference between listening to your well-calibrated inner alarm bells—“hugging this person is unsafe”—and never tuning those alarm bells in the first place because you are taught that touch is about your mood rather than the million other factors at play.

In this new consent-based version of hugging, the child is taught that relationship decisions should be made based on preferences and feelings, rather than on the dignity of self and the other person. 

The modern version of consent (including, in parenting, for something as simple as changing a diaper) is a slippery concept that sometimes ignores the many other aspects of embodiment in human relationships. In this new consent-based version of hugging, the child is taught that relationship decisions should be made based on preferences and fleeting feelings, rather than on considering the dignity of self and the other person, and the powerful meaning that is communicated through hugging. 

When we teach children that the only thing that matters in a hug is whether or not they feel like giving it, we may be handicapping them socially and emotionally. Human beings use their bodies to communicate; if little Larry chooses not to hug Aunt Ruth because of her whiskers, he has, in fact, rejected her as untouchable. He has learned that it is appropriate to reject an elderly person who loves him and is lonely because of—well—her looks. He doesn’t want to feel her stray chin hair, so he can refuse her touch. 

But what happens to Ruth if no one will touch her because (checks notes again) she isn’t perfectly tweezed? Her pain and isolation actually do matter; and here, forbearance, mercy, and acceptance have dropped completely out of the equation. The child has learned that these things mean little or nothing compared with whether he feels like hugging. 

Instead of teaching children that consent is what matters most in human touch, we should instruct them as to appropriate social behavior. We should teach them the customs of our culture so that they can develop social awareness and the skills to develop and maintain close relationships while preserving their own safety. In my experience, no one bats an eye when a preschooler is too shy to give a hug on occasion, but children do need to be taught when and how to shake a hand, say please and thank you, and, yes, give a hug that is relationally needed even though the person they’re hugging might smell kinda weird, or the child would just rather be doing something else. It’s not innate! Kids must learn to look another person in the eye and introduce themselves. They should be required to write thank-you notes, whether or not they consent to sitting down and writing them. They should thank their host for dinner even if it tasted kind of gross. And yes, they should, generally speaking, give relatives hugs. Such habits show other people that they are valued and show children how to use human touch to communicate love, goodwill, and acceptance. 

When we teach children that the only thing that matters in a hug is whether or not they feel like giving it, we may be handicapping them socially and emotionally.

This is not only important for building healthy relationships, but also for protecting children from unhealthy ones. I’m unconvinced that if “parents let kids take the lead” in these things (as one expert in the article suggests), “there doesn’t seem to be a risk of children internalizing the wrong message.” Only in the context of knowing the appropriate and healthy norm can children accurately distinguish between a dangerous touch and a harmless one. Telling a child no one should ever touch them unless they feel like it is nearly as bad as telling them that they never, ever have the right to say “no.”

For in truth, there are many situations in which parents should rightly take authority over children’s bodies despite the lack of consent. We strap screaming and writhing toddlers into car seats. We pin down feverish preschoolers and force medicine into their mouths. We require children to eat their vegetables. We make them go to school. We force them to wear coats when it’s 0 degrees outside. We make them stop hitting their siblings, and not just because their siblings didn’t consent. It’s because the way decent human beings use their bodies is not just about how they feel.

Nothing on the above list is easy or feels good for the parent, either. But parents do this kind of thing because they love their children, and it is the right thing to do. Maturity in this area means combining awareness of one’s physical and emotional feelings with discernment about what is good for oneself and others.

Of course, physical affection is its own specific category of physical touch, and the word “consent” calls to mind the question of sexual touch in particular. We do want our children to be able to say “no” to sexual touch, and not to worry about whether they are being polite. But teaching them that all relational touch is conditional upon their feelings is not the same as teaching them to yell if someone touches them inappropriately. Instead, it treats all touch as the same because it is all primarily governed by consent—which may well actually lead to increased anxiety and isolation instead of agency and healthy connection. Indeed, we know that predators use children’s consent or complex sexual feelings (including pleasure) to create feelings of shame and complicityin their victims. Is consent really what matters most, for example, in a sexual encounter between a 14-year-old and an adult?

If we want to give children true sovereignty over their bodies as they approach adulthood, we need to teach them how to consider their preferences and feelings and social customs and moral convictions. There are many situations in life in which we do not want to touch or be touched, but we still should touch. We should touch a person who is vomiting or bleeding, even though we don’t want to get sick or bloodied. We should care for the dying, and visit the imprisoned, and wipe the tears of a person who is crying. We should learn to put an arm around a distressed person even if we’re “not a hugger” or the person smells because that person’s need is more important than our fear of awkwardness. We should shake hands with the usher at church. And we should teach our children to do the same.

Wise adults reserve rejecting hugs and handshakes and the like for incidents of danger or utter moral depravity—for this is what we communicate when we refuse a genuine offer of respect or affection. If we want our children to develop healthy physical relationships and the ability to effectively refuse dangerous touch, we need to teach them to consider far more than just how they feel. So yes, in general, that means Grandma should get those hugs and kisses this Christmas.

Dixie Dillon Lane is an American historian and essayist living in Virginia. Her writing can be found at Hearth & Field, Current, and Front Porch Republic, as well as TheHollow.substack.com.

*Photo credit: Shutterstock