When I heard about a new survey out of the U.K. that found that the most common fight between expectant parents is over baby names, I couldn't help but chuckle a little bit. Because even though it seems like the dumbest thing to fight over, it really can create a lot of conflict between parents-to-be.
And what's interesting is that while 75 percent of the parents surveyed admitted arguing over choosing a baby name, only 28 percent fought about whether the mom should go back to work, and 27 percent got into an argument over whether they should have more kids.
Wow. Wouldn't you think the latter two subjects would generate a lot more heat than the first?
But then again, it really does seem to make sense. I know my husband and I got into it on a few occasions, especially when we found out we were having a boy. We had plenty of girl names on our list that we agreed on, but the boy names were an entirely different story.
And I really don't mean to throw him under the bus, here (yes I do), but he pretty much vetoed every single name I decided I liked (other than the one we ultimately chose for our son, of course).
I loved the name Mason. He said it was too common. I thought Nolan had a really nice ring to it. He didn't want anyone to think we'd named him after a baseball player. And he shot down another one of my favorites too -- James, because he said it was just way too "blah." (It's still one of my faves.)
There were honestly a few times I was convinced our son would remain nameless for weeks after his birth, until one fateful day when we finally found one we both agreed on and really adored.
And looking back on it now, I have to say, we were both pretty stupid to get into heated discussions about something we should've been excited to do, even if we didn't quite see eye to eye on every name thrown out as a possibility. Maybe if we'd sat down together and talked like civilized adults about why we liked or disliked certain names, we would've come to a consensus a whole lot sooner.
But I guess it's still a good thing we don't plan on having any more babies. If we wound up pregnant with another boy, I'm pretty sure we'd be screwed.
Chill out, moms and dads-to-be. There are a lot better things to argue over.
Have you and your husband argued over baby names?
Image via nanny snowflake/Flickr
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Comments 14
a little
His name is Nolan Michael instead :)
It's kinda important what you name your child. Think of all the mean nicknames that kids can come up with...
For example: Amanda can be teased and the kids can say, "She's so ugly, she's a man, duh!"
My husband and I didn't really fight over names but it did take us awhile to settle on one that we both liked. We were trying to think of a good girl's name that started with J as that was a tradition in his family. We really wanted to name her after my husban'd deceased sister, but my MIL pointed out that one of her kids' may want that name for their children and we didn't want to have multiple people in the family with the same name. We eventually agreed on Marika (pronounced Mareeka) with a middle J name (Jane.) She's named after her Ukrainian great-grandmother (she goes by the name Marge but her brothers and sisters used to call her Marika when she was little.) We were talking to her about how we were having a hard time picking out a name and she told us about her siblings calling her Marika and my husband instantly fell in love with the name. I was a little more hesitant as it's such an unusual name but I have to say, it absolutely suits her!
Before we found out the gender we were arguing over boys' names. We had a girl's name we both liked and agreed on, but just could not find a boy's name we both liked. We agreed to put off that discussion until we found out the gender. Since we are having a girl it ended up not being an issue so I'm glad we didn't waste too much time disagreeing over the boy's name. Then again we can't agree on a middle name. Since I had agreed to give the boy a middle name I absolutely hated but was meaningful to him I thought it would be fair if I could take care of the girl's middle name, but he doesn't seem to agree. We'll figure it out. :)