Viral Tweet Tells Parents Not To Have Sex While Kids Are Home, Twitter Laughs

There are plenty of big and little sacrifices parents make when they have kids: sleep, money, career opportunities, spontaneity, clean counters. And recently, one indignant Twitter user added another item to that list: *puts on reading glasses, checks notes* — having sex in your own home. *removes glasses and rubs eyes, suddenly exhausted.* Yes, really.

The story begins, as many stories on Twitter begin, with a different post all together. In it, Twitter user @sisterlelianas (we’ll get back to them in a sec) shared a video from TikTok user @part.time.milf (given the content of the video, the name really works here). In said video, the TikToker’s partner informs her that their daughter is crying because she heard mommy “screaming.” (The fact that she is filming from bed and her partner is shirtless and looks simultaneously proud and chagrined leaves little doubt about why mommy was screaming.) When @part.time.milf goes into her child’s room, the girl sniffles that she “wanted to know what’s wrong, but no one was answering me.” The mom then sweetly comforts the girl, apologizing for not hearing her.

Many a parent has been in this situation: Realizing only too late that they got carried away and their child overheard... certain things. It happens. That said, just because it happens doesn’t mean it needs to be filmed and shared on social media. (As of press time, it’s been viewed about 33 million times on TikTok alone.)

One person who saw the video was aforementioned Twitter user @sisterlelianas, and they had an opinion:

“am i the only one who doesn’t find this funny in the slightest…?” they mused. “if you have a child in the house why would you SCREAM during intercourse with your partner? children don’t know what you’re doing, and even if they did it’s incredibly disrespectful and traumatising for them?”

OK.

Traumatizing feels a bit much. Not every embarrassing, awkward, distressing, or scary moment is traumatic. By the end of the original video, the little girl is far more interested in the fact that she also heard her parents order pizza than anything else. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that while she was almost certainly scared or confused she’s probably not traumatized. (Even @sisterlelianas acknowledged in another tweet that, sometimes, kids might just hear you because life happens.)

But, OK, point taken: keep it down when you have kids in the house. I think all reasonable people can acknowledge the wisdom of this take.

There’s more though. Some people on Twitter play by improv rules: every take, no matter how good or bad, must be responded to with “Yes and” until, eventually, it becomes A Hot Take. One particular Twitter user retweeted @sisterlelianas reaction with one of their own. As a courtesy, we are not sharing this Twitter user’s account, as they have since deleted their post.

“[H]aving sex when your children are in the house is weird. full stop,” they begin. “if you want to have sex that bad do it when no one’s in the house. have someone babysit your kid. rent a hotel. they don’t need to hear that because it can be incredibly traumatic. do better.”

To reiterate: this poster is suggesting that the solution to the problem of your kids overhearing you have sex isn’t “Hey, maybe keep it down.” It’s “If you want to have sex that badly, you absolute sex deviants, be sure to plan all passion in advance and spend $20 per hour on a babysitter and $150 on a hotel room because boning within a five mile radius of your child will traumatize them. Or you could wait until a time when they’re not home. That happens a lot, right? Parents being home when their young children aren’t?”

No, friend. I will not be drafting a sex budget that rivals my grocery bill on the possibility that my constantly-home children might hear me moan a little louder than I’d meant to.

And, of course, with a few bizarre exceptions, Twitter agreed and had a field day. The responses ranged from bemusement...

to jokes...

...to memes...

We all learned a lot from Twitter’s main character today, mainly that they’re almost certainly not a parent.