February 21, 2006

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How do you kiss your parents?

Informal poll: Do you kiss your parents on the mouth, or on the cheek?

Since I am a cheek-kisser, I find the idea of people willfully kissing their parents on the lips to be fairly strange. Today Jeanette informed me that she is a mouth-kisser (I knew she was a mouth-kisser of boyfriends, but no, she was referring to her mother and father). The idea is quite strange to me. And why?

It seems obvious that any associations some of us have between mouth-kissing and romance are purely socialized. There is nothing innately incestuous about the act of kissing one's parents on the mouth. The Freudian perspective, of course, would be that kissing anyone anywhere is linked inextricably to sex. And indeed, it seems implausible that if there were nothing inherently romantic about kissing on the mouth, the practice would nevertheless have appeared in so many cultures (an empirical fact about which I have done no research and am entirely uncertain).

Why, then, is the act of mouth-kissing within the family so offputting to us cheek-kissers? Just like when one goes to high-five a buddy and ends up connecting only tangentially, making a pathetic "fwup" sound, rather than a pleasing and robust "smack," cheek-kissers sometimes miscommunicate and accidentally touch lips for a tense and awkward instant. The discomfort of such a situation is hard to shake off, and is no more comfortable even after acknowledging that there is no reason to disdain mouth-kissing.

But it just seems so weird! It is likely that the two practices are differences of culture tied to ethnicity, geography, class, and other externalities, so I doubt we'll really unravel this, but what do you think? Until then, I say we just stick to licking each other (example above and to right).

Posted at February 21, 2006 3:52 AM | Comments (4)


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I'm definitely a cheek-kisser, and people who kiss their parents on their mouths freak me out to no end.

Posted by: Jay at February 21, 2006 10:28 AM


I too am a cheek-kisser. I will take it further and say that I don't even want to eat or drink after a parent. I just don't want their saliva in my mouth! I can eat or drink after a friend, but no mouth kisses.I know it's somewhat illogical, but it is what it is. Somehow, I doubt I'm the only one on the planet that feels this way though.

Posted by: Jason at February 21, 2006 4:01 PM


It's both ways in my family, but cheek-kissing is predominant. I don't really mind it either, it's just not a big deal to me. The only time I do mind is when my grandmother (who is a 100% mouth-kisser) does it. She's like a piece of dead chicken skin... and she stinks of whiskey. Yuck.

Posted by: Amanda at February 21, 2006 9:28 PM


We Conways are mouth kissers. There was a time when I pondered being weirded out by it (around the time I started kissing people who weren't my family on the mouth) but the difference between family mouth kissing and sexual mouth kissing was so blatant that any weird feelings I had petered out.

Posted by: Sarah at February 22, 2006 6:50 PM

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