There’s One Name in This World That Takes Me to a Dark Place. My Husband Wants to Use It for Our Daughter.

Care and Feeding Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by LENblR/iStock/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here. Dear Care and Feeding, When I was in middle school, one of my classmates, “Margot,” was the ringleader of a group of girls who bullied me. It got so bad that l tried to commit suicide. I failed only because my dad came home early and caught me before it went too far. I went to therapy, and I switched schools. All these years later, I think of myself as mostly having moved beyond this, with one exception: The name “Margot” really bothers me. My husband and I have a son together, and now we are expecting a daughter. As soon as we found out the baby’s sex, he told me he wanted to name our daughter after his late mother. His mom died before I met him; by all accounts, she was a lovely person. But her name was Margot, and I can’t do it. He suggested using Margot as a middle name then. But I just can’t. I don’t want either of our beloved baby’s names to be something that makes me clench up and cry. I suggested we use his mom’s middle name for our daughter’s first or middle name, or that we use her maiden name, but he is insistent on our using her first name. How do we find a compromise here? —A Rose By Any Other Dear Rose, Naming a baby is a two-yes situation (or it should be). I don’t know that you can “compromise” in any way other than the very reasonable ones you’ve already suggested. (Well, I do, actually: There’s the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition of honoring a loved one who has died by using their first initial. I was named for my great-grandmother Minukha; my six-week-old grandson Milo was named after my dad, whose name was Morton. But if your husband objects to using his mother’s middle or original last name, he won’t go for using the “M” either, I’m sure.) I understand that your husband loved his mother very much and wants to honor her, but he is in the wrong here. You should absolutely not be forced to give your child a name that causes you pain. Have you told him how much distress this name elicits for you? If you haven’t—if you’ve minimized the effect of it because you’re ashamed it still has such a hold on you, or because you’re sure he won’t understand (or for any other reason)—tell him now. If you haven’t told him what Margot and her gang did to you (because you don’t want to talk about/think about it, or because you’re sure you should be over it by now—or for any other reason), tell him that too. If he still insists on naming this baby Margot, I’m afraid the problem you two have is bigger and deeper than a conflict over a name. Let me be clear: One parent vetoing a name for any reason, even “I just don’t like it,” is enough for that name to be stricken from the list. There are other ways for your husband to honor the memory of his mother. He might consider funding a scholarship—or even a small annual award—in her name at a school that was meaningful to her, or make donations to a cause that was important to her. He can tell your children stories about her, show them photographs of her, and introduce them to things she enjoyed doing. He might turn her birthday into an annual family holiday. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don’t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Care and Feeding, My daughter “Annie” and her husband allow their two boys (ages 4 and 6) to curse with impunity in their home. I am appalled and have spoken to Annie on numerous occasions about it, only to be told that I’m “making a big deal over nothing,” that the kids are going to learn those words anyway, that such words don’t hurt anyone, etc. I didn’t raise my daughter to behave like an uncouth churl, and I don’t want my grandchildren to act that way either. What can I do to instill a sense of propriety in Annie and her boys? —Tired of the Ugly Talk Dear Tired, You can—and should—do nothing at all. You don’t get a vote in how your grandchildren are raised. And if you keep bringing this up, I suspect that you will eventually be barred from your daughter’s home. You should not weigh in on your adult child’s parenting decisions. As you say, you raised your daughter. The raising stops there. If the children’s use of curse words is painful to you, feel free to impose rules about what they are and aren’t allowed to say when in your home (but be prepared not only for the children, while they are this young and have apparently never been asked to do this before, to have a hard time code-switching for the sake of your rules, but also for the possibility that Annie will end visits to your home, too). There would have been no harm in mentioning that some of the words that are used casually in her home make you uncomfortable, sad, or anxious, thus giving her the chance to consider telling her children that some words are better left unsaid in Grandma’s presence, even though they don’t bother her or their dad. (Full disclosure: I taught my daughter very early on, by the age of 3, that the expression “Oh, God” and other phrases and words that we used freely at home should not be uttered in the presence of my in-laws, her Southern Baptist grandparents, because they “hurt their feelings,” and we must always take care not to hurt people’s feelings. She asked why these words were hurtful to them, and I did my best to explain. But I also told her that it doesn’t always matter why something hurts someone, only that it does, and when we know it does, we don’t do it.) But for you, I’m afraid, this ship has sailed—you already approached this subject in a way that alienated your daughter and got her back up. And I feel honor-bound to tell you this, as well: I suspect Annie embraces cursing because you made such a “big deal” about it when she was growing up, and that your discomfort with the language she and her family use is not a bug but a feature of her parenting choices. You might try to have a different kind of conversation with her than the ones you’ve had so far, one in which you don’t presume that you know better than she does, that you’re the boss, or that she’s doing anything wrong. Instead, recognize that you might have made some mistakes and let her know you’re aware that there are many ways to do a good job raising one’s children. At the very least, this will surprise and disarm her. Maybe then she’ll take pity on you and call for a moratorium on cursing when you’re around. (Don’t bet on it, though.) —Michelle More Advice From Slate I just returned to work after my 12 weeks of maternity leave, and I’m really struggling with leaving my baby in day care. Quitting my job is not an option, both because we’d have to sell our home and because I have a very niche job where positions don’t come up often. Because of the nature of my job, I can’t transition to part-time or work remotely. Here’s the issue: My husband is entitled to take eight weeks of paid leave in our state, but he doesn’t want to take it… Advice Family Kids Parenting