Retired soccer star David Beckham is one of the biggest celebrity athletes in the world, but his habit of kissing his children on the lips has raised some fans’ eyebrows over the years.
While Beckham has been called “gross” by some detractors, he has defended himself, saying it’s just his way of showing affection to his kids.
Beckham has been married to his wife Victoria — who achieved her own international fame as “Posh Spice” in the iconic girl group Spice Girls — since 1999, and the power couple has four kids together: Brooklyn, born 1999, Romeo, born 2002, Cruz, born 2005, and their only daughter Harper, born 2011.
The couple have always shown a lot of love for their kids — but occasionally in a way that makes some fans uncomfortable.
Over the years, Beckham has shared a number of photos of him kissing his daughter Harper on the lips. The photos frequently ignite a debate about whether or not it’s appropriate for parents to kiss their children this way — fans are often split, some defending Beckham as a doting dad and some calling him “gross.”
“Why do you kiss your daughter on the lips? It’s weird and inappropriate,” one comment reads.
“Although this is very sweet, please do not kiss your daughter on the lips,” another wrote.
In 2019, TV host Piers Morgan called Beckham’s behavior “creepy.”
“It’s very sweet but why would a father kiss his daughter on the lips?” Morgan said on Good Morning Britain, per The Independent. “Don’t get it – creepy. Weird. Then you post that for the world – you posted that for the world, why?”
“Weird, Weird, weird, it’s just weird.”
However, Beckham has defended himself, saying there was nothing creepy about it and it was just his parenting style. “I kiss all my kids on the lips,” Beckham said in a Facebook Live discussion in 2017.
“Brooklyn, maybe not,” he said of his oldest son who was 18 at the time, “he might find that a little bit strange. But I’m very affectionate with the kids. It’s how I was brought up and Victoria, and it’s how we are with our children.”
“We want to show our kids love and we protect them, look after them, and support them, and we’re very affectionate with them.”
In the age of social media, when celebrities are sharing more and more personal photos with their families, celebs are frequently scrutinized by fans for their parenting decisions.
Besides the Beckhams, several celebrities have received backlash for kissing their kids on the lips, including Tom Brady, Hilary Duff and Jessica Alba. Like Beckham, these celebrities have defended themselves.
“For anyone commenting that a kiss on the lips with my four-year-old is ‘inappropriate,’ go ahead and click a quick unfollow with your warped minds and judgement,” Duff clapped back at critics, according to Us Weekly.
Even outside the world of celebrities, kissing kids has been a topic of debate among parents and parenting experts. Some say it promotes important emotional connectivity between parents and children, others maintain that it’s strange and crosses young kids’ boundaries.
Ultimately it comes down to what parents think is appropriate for themselves and their kids, and depends on a lot of factors like comfort level and cultural norms.
What do you think — is it okay or inappropriate for parents to kiss their kids this way? Please share this story and let us know your thoughts.
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