Stop Calling Your Romantic Partner "Babe"

Do it immediately and also, tell everyone else to do the same

Photo by PHUOC LE on Unsplash

This medium-length piece will immediately be subjected to the age old criticism of “you’re overthinking this just let it be and let people do what they do.”

This substack is a place for me to overthink on the page, so that’s what you get. I’m about to make some really good points, so stay tuned.

We all know that loads of people call their partner/SO “baby” or “babe” or even now as all things reduce, “bae.” My 73-year-old father calls his girlfriend - an incredibly accomplished and lovely woman - “babe.” My 20-year-old daughter and her boyfriend call each other “babe.” It’s everywhere and it’s not an issue.

My wife and I have never called each other “babe.” Why? Partly due to the fact that we met, dated and courted, and got married at/in a cultural pocket that didn’t really use this term of endearment. On my part, it’s also somewhat due to not wanting to be one of the crowd. I really don’t like going with a flow I haven’t made intentional choices to go with - after real consideration.

No, I don’t overthink everything. Okay, I’m an introvert, so I guess I do. But not that bad. Relax. Go with the flow of this article.

The reason I never called my wife (whose name is Annemarie, btw) “babe” or “baby” is because the term has always felt like a diminutive - like it’s infantilizing her. Why? Because I know what a baby is. Nearly 100% of humanity knows what a baby is.

Annemarie has never been a baby since I’ve known her. She was 19 when I met her. She’s smart, hard-working, ambitious, careful, academically gifted, holds high integrity, and fully worth of my respect. We were first friends, then bf/gf, then engaged, then married. I’ve respected and admired her ever since. Sure there have been days of frustration and the like, but that’s hardly a blip in well over 9000 days of spending time with her.

I just feel like she deserves my respect, and knowing perfectly well where the term “babe” comes from, I simply can’t bring myself to call her that.

Nor should you with your significant other. Why? To push back against a mass-infantilizing of people - the members of society. We have a group of power-brokers who are ever-encroaching on our sovereignty, building not only helpful safety nets but also a massive and bloated nanny-state.

We have political and ideological sides to nearly every issue. The people on both sides of these issues constantly demean, dehumanize, and disrespect those on the other side. It’s tearing people apart. Down to the family level. Those terrible articles about “How to talk to you MAGA uncle” and “How to logically destroy your woke nephew” are only one aspect of many damaging, garbage things that we not only need to not participate in and boost, but also push back against and avoid.

One powerful thing we can do is to stop infantilizing the most important person in our lives by calling them “baby” or some variation thereof.

Did you know that the common belief is that the word “baby” in English probably came into Middle English in the 1300s? Yeah, historical linguists believe that it’s an adultifying of one of the first sounds that babies make. You can hear that, can’t you? “Ba ba ba ba…”

Then around 1600, the word “baby,” according to the Oxford Dictionary, started being used to describe “childish adult people.” So when it was first used to NOT refer to an actual infant, it was an insult.

Then Sonny and Cher, and Jim Morrison, and Justin Bieber came along and we were hosed. Mostly kidding. It’s been around as a term of endearment since probably late 1800s to very early 1900s.

It’s not harmless - it’s kind of evil. Slippery evil. You could say, generously, that this term of endearment is sweet and it’s nice to sort of see the person you are romantic with as someone you want to protect and nurture and care for.

But the flip side is that it’s a diminishing term of an adult person. It’s condescending. It actually changes the power structure in a relationship when one calls the other “baby” because the one using the term then is superior and is - not always with intent - calling their loved one helpless or clueless or in need of infant-level talk.

We need to be intentional about showing respect for those we love and building them up. If we can start doing that, we can start pushing back on the hyper-infantilization of our society.

Let’s be competent, thoughtful adults, shall we?