Parenting & Family Quote by Jessamyn West

West lands a small, barbed joke that doubles as a moral instruction: stop treating adults like infants just because you miss the feeling of being needed. The line works because it flips the sentimental impulse of care into something faintly predatory. "Baby the old one" sounds affectionate until you hear the condescension in it - the way fussing, hovering, and overprotecting can become a power move dressed up as devotion.

The specific intent is corrective. West is drawing a boundary between nurturing that helps someone grow and indulgence that keeps them small. The syntax does the heavy lifting: two short imperatives, a neat swap of "new" and "old", and the punchy repetition of "baby" as noun and verb. That little linguistic trick exposes how easily love slides into control. If you crave the rituals of caretaking - the swaddling, the soothing, the dependency - direct that appetite somewhere it belongs. Don't retrofit it onto a partner, a grown child, or anyone whose adulthood threatens your sense of purpose.

The subtext is cultural as much as personal. Midcentury domestic life, especially for women, often framed worth around being indispensable. In that ecosystem, "babying" an adult can masquerade as virtue while quietly sabotaging autonomy. West, writing out of a period obsessed with family roles and emotional management, punctures the romance of overmothering. It's a warning against confusing intimacy with infantilization - and a reminder that affection becomes corrosive when it refuses to let the other person be fully grown.