A father's nickname for his teenage daughter's roster of boyfriends has been criticized on Reddit. Reddit argued the joke said more about the daughter than the father had realized when he made it.
The man's post explained that his 17-year-old daughter (referred to as Sarah) has been through a string of short-lived relationships over the past two years.
So he was tired of investing in introductions that never seemed to last, and told his wife he had decided to stop learning the young men's names altogether, referring to all of them collectively as "Baskin-Robbins." Why? Because the ice cream chain has rotating flavors and is similar to his daughter's "flavor of the week" habit.
"Don't ask me for a count, because I honestly don't know," the father wrote in the post.
[embed]https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/1tgl5vt/aita_for_calling_my_daughters_assorted_boyfriends/[/embed]To make matters worse, he repeated the joke to a friend, who reacted angrily and told him the nickname implied his daughter has no morals. This reaction "absolutely blindsided" him, the father said, as he insisted he had always viewed the joke as commentary on teenage boys and their fleeting attention, not on his daughter's character.
A Reddit user, unconvinced, said, "That joke, although funny to you, does not reflect well on your daughter." Then, a top-voted response identified the core contradiction in the post. "You're making a joke out of her gaining that sort of experience," they wrote as they pointed to the irony of simultaneously calling a teenager naive for lacking relationship experience while mocking her for trying to accumulate it.
Several commenters argued that the nickname had a connotation that the father appeared to have missed. A user also said that the reference to the number of boyfriends implies she has no strength of character, but short-term dating is normal adolescent behavior.
Another user wrote, "Everyone who hears you talking about your daughter's many boyfriends thinks you're talking about the huge amount of [partners] she has."
Another user wrote that their parents' teasing about dating had made them unwilling to discuss relationships with them 20 years later. "You should think about what kind of relationship you want to have with your kids in the future," they cautioned.
I asked my daughter how things were going with her new pilot boyfriend.
— Funny Dad Jokes (@FunnyDadJokess) November 26, 2024
She said their relationship was “up in the air.”I think this was a dad joke.
On the other hand, a user suggested the father was misreading the situation. A daughter who dates multiple people and drops them when they fall short is demonstrating wisdom, which is far from a character flaw. "Be glad she's dating different people and then dropping them when she finds out they aren't right for her," they wrote.
In an edit to his post, the father acknowledged the criticism, writing, "Yes, the joke will be stopping," he wrote, "and yes, a more concerted effort will be made to retain names." He also thanked users who had offered direct messages with advice, saying the feedback had shown him what "[he] honestly never considered."
