Expert Take: You Should Ask Your Baby's Permission Before Changing His Diaper

You’d never want a stranger to touch your baby without permission. Come to think of it, you might even be wary of a relative sneaking a kiss from baby without asking you first. But have you ever considered that baby should be the one granting this permission? And that you should be asking for it too? In an effort to prove a point about consent, one sexuality expert says parents should be asking baby for consent before they change a diaper.

“Of course a baby is not going to respond ‘yes mum, that is awesome, I’d love to have my nappy changed,’” said sexuality expert Deanne Carson in a segment with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC News). “But if you leave a space and wait for body language and wait to make eye contact then you are letting that child know that their response matters.”

While Carson usually works with children ages 3 and up, she says she’s learned parents need to introduce the concept of consent even earlier.

As you’d probably expect, the initial response has been flippant.

But others have a more thought-provoking rejection of Carson’s ideas.

Still, others consider Carson’s early introduction of consent completely reasonable.

Despite all the flack she’s catching, Carson certainly isn’t the first person to introduce the idea of consent to parenting. Last year, mom Nisha Moodley explained she always asks her baby son permission before holding him.

“I always feel for his ‘yes’,” she wrote on Instagram. “Why? Because we want him to know that his body is his, and that others’ bodies are theirs, and no one gets to make choices about someone else’s body.”

Both Carson and Moodley’s approaches exhibit tenets of RIE parenting, a parenting style that suggests babies are born with a full personality and are more competent than you think. RIE parenting involves lots of communication, and narrating or explaining most everything that’s going on—diaper changes included.