It can be a fraught question, whether to give anyone parenting advice. But a total stranger you run into while shopping? Should you ever butt in and offer them tips on how to raise their kids? One book lover posted about that type of dilemma on Reddit’s “Am I the A**hole” forum after she gave a mom some tips on books to buy for her teen daughter — but her boyfriend thinks she should have just stayed out of it.
“My boyfriend and I went to Target the other day and were looking at books. Next to us was a mum and her daughter around 12-13 years old. The girl picked up a book, saying she’s heard good things about it on TikTok,” the book-loving OP wrote. “The book in question looks quite sweet by the cover and the blurb wouldn’t raise any red flags to a parent. However, I’ve read this book before and it’s FILTH (I say this in the best way possible). Like, full of smut. Was written for the sole purpose of being smut and not much else. It’s like the blurb is a decoy to hide how dirty it really is. Not at all appropriate for a tween/teen.”
She continued, “I took the mum aside and gently warned her that the book contains extremely graphic scenes that many parents would not be okay with their child reading. She thumbed through the book and landed on a page. Sure enough she put it back. I pointed to a couple of other books that are more appropriate for a tween/teen (still a little romancey, but much cleaner). The mum was very thankful and it was a pleasant exchange.”
Seems innocent enough, right? Well, OP’s boyfriend didn’t think so.
“My boyfriend, on the other hand, huffed and rolled his eyes throughout the entire conversation,” she wrote. “On the way out of the shop he said I should keep my opinions to myself and that it was embarrassing for me to interfere the way I did. That if someone interfered when an adult bought him porno mags as a teen, he’d have lost his sh*t. I told him that perhaps someone should’ve stepped in, because that’s also extremely inappropriate.”
He called her nosey and accused her of “ruining the kid’s day,” so now she’s looking for some unbiased opinions from the internet. Was she wrong to step in?
The top-rated comment on the thread immediately says no.
“Part of me was curious if you were being a bit of a prude over some PG-13 content, but if mom read a segment from the book herself and made the decision after your suggestion then that was a good call for her child,” the commenter wrote.
Another highly voted commenter agreed, writing, “I would way rather foil a tween’s plan to sneak smut past their mom than risk the kid picking the book naively and then reading some scenes that they aren’t ready for. The internet exists, if the kid wants smut she can find it. You made the right call.”
And, as some commenters pointed out, OP didn’t overstep — she simply gave this mom the information she needed to make a fully informed decision about the book.
“That’s up to the parent. And the parent ultimately made the decision,” one commenter wrote. “OP simply gave the mom a heads up, mom flipped the book and read an excerpt and decided it wasn’t suitable for her own daughter.”
Overall, OP’s approach here seemed perfectly rational — and the teen still left with books she was likely to enjoy. Win-win!
