My Mythology-Obsessed Wife Has a Truly Terrible Idea for Our Daughter’s Name

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I’m a second-generation Greek immigrant, and my wife has an interest in classical mythology. So it was perhaps inevitable that when the ultrasound revealed a daughter expected in late spring, we went for a name from classical mythology. However, this has led to an extremely severe but also extremely stupid argument. You see, my wife wants to name our daughter “Clytemnestra,” and I am dead set against it.

None of my relatives back in the old country bear that name. Nobody I’ve asked knows anyone named Clytemnestra. For the people who remember their mythology well enough to recognize the name at all, she’s thought of as the skank who murdered her husband when he finally came home and was about to discover the affair she’d been carrying on while he was away. I doubt anyone over here would recognize the name well enough to tease her over it (at least, for the specific connotations instead of it just being some weird foreign name), but I still don’t want my daughter named that.

It’s not like there aren’t perfectly good alternative names if you want to reach into the well of myth. Penelope, for instance, or Andromache or Galatea, are names with much better reputations, and ones I’ve heard attached to people in the present day. But she’s dead set on Clytemnestra, and this has gotten to the point where we’re both digging in our heels. I don’t know how to de-escalate, or even how to work on some other name. Can you help me?

—Greek Tragedy

Dear Tragedian,

First of all, some might quibble with your characterization of Clytemnestra as a “skank”! Is it not possible to view her instead as an angel of vengeance? After all, did her husband Agamemnon not trick and murder her daughter Iphigenia? What you call an “affair,” I call a mourning mother using the only thing the patriarchy could not take away from her—her sexual wiles—to secure the crucial assistance of a soldier in order to take her revenge, a decade later.

Opinions differ, is what I mean to say, and characters from classical mythology are portrayed differently across stories—the Clytemnestra of the Oresteia is not at all the same as the Clytemnestra of the Odyssey, who diverges substantially from the Clytemnestra of Natalie Haynes’ recent feminist retelling of the Trojan War, A Thousand Ships. Your wife’s opinion of Clytemnestra might not be the same as yours—and the people your daughter meets down the line are just as likely to agree with her as with you.

And even if they do agree with you, does it really matter that much? Ask the parents who named their babies “Khaleesi,” and I expect most of them will tell you that the name long ago stopped primarily reminding them of the murderous Game of Thrones character and now its only connotation is to their beloved daughters. And that name is indisputably embarrassing, unlike Clytemnestra, which is basically fine! You would come to feel the same about your li’l Nestra, who as soon as she is born will stop being an abstraction and become such a particular human being that you won’t think twice about the origins of the name. It will just be her name.

On the other hand: The rule is, every expectant parent gets three no-explanation-required name vetoes. That’s just standard. It’s why neither of our children is named “Furious Kois.” If you hate “Clytemnestra,” simply employ one of your vetoes. Then suggest something terrible yourself (“Gorgon,” maybe), to encourage your wife to use one of hers. Have a good old laugh about it and move on. You’ll soon have way more important things to argue about.

Submit your questions to Care and Feeding here. It’s anonymous! (Questions may be edited for publication.)

Dear Care and Feeding,

My 10-year-old, “Rachel,” has wanted to host a sleepover with her best friend “Emily” for a long time, but Emily was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes about two years ago, and neither her parents nor we felt like it would be safe. Emily’s family hasn’t been willing to host a sleepover for other reasons. However, they now feel like Emily knows enough about her diabetes that they feel comfortable allowing Emily to sleep over at our house. The date has been decided well in advance. Emily lives one road down and her parents will be on call in case we need anything.

Rachel has been super excited about it because this is what she’s been begging for since they became friends a few years ago. But now, she’s suddenly become very hesitant. I think this is perfectly understandable—I can certainly relate to suddenly having second thoughts when something you’ve wanted forever finally comes around. My wife, on the other hand, is very worried and is starting to feed into Rachel’s fears, in my opinion. For example, Rachel needs her favorite stuffed penguin to fall asleep and wears an eye patch every evening as a treatment for her amblyopia. But Emily is a sweet girl who will not belittle another 10-year-old for sleeping with a stuffed animal, and Rachel doesn’t need to patch every night. All the other problems Rachel and my wife are now bringing up have similarly simple solutions.

I think it’s natural to be nervous about something that you’ve been looking forward to for a long time, and Rachel is an anxious kid already. My wife thinks that this is really serious and we should call off the sleepover until we can figure out if there’s any deeper reason behind her sudden change of heart. Is she overreacting? Am I underreacting? What should we do?

—First Sleepover Jitters

Dear Jitters,

You should do your best not to call off the sleepover. You’re right that it makes total sense that Rachel is enduring some last-minute anxiety upon finally being granted her life’s dream. Especially because she’s spent the past two years being told it literally wasn’t safe for Emily to sleep over! So now the time is coming near and she’s a bundle of nerves, jangling with excitement and pleasure and also fear that something terrible will happen. There’s no deeper reason than that.

Obviously, you should not force a child to host a sleepover she’s dead-set against. But I don’t get the sense from your letter that Rachel is feeling that way. Instead, she’s simply bringing up possibilities that she’s nervous about. Gently encourage your wife to join you in reassuring your daughter—not to tell her that nothing will go wrong, but to tell her even if some things go wrong, it’s OK, and you’ll be there to help, and Emily will still be her friend. Because that’s the truth!

Sleepovers, of course, are the worst, and if I had my way, they would be banned by the Geneva Convention. They offer innumerable opportunities for children’s hearts to be broken, and for parents to suffer alongside them. I will hold very unfair but implacable grudges against certain peers of my children over their behavior at long-ago sleepovers until the day I die. But when sleepovers go well, they are sweet opportunities for children to forge bonds while also feeling as though they’re getting away with something really naughty (staying up until 11:15 p.m.).

Invite Emily’s parents over for dinner on the night of the sleepover. Remain engaged and observant. Listen to your child, and to her friend, and take their concerns seriously. Make them pancakes in the morning if that’s appropriate to Emily’s dietary restrictions. Good luck and Godspeed.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

My daughter is a tween and her friend is unbelievably loud. They knew each other in elementary school, before she moved away, and kept in touch via video calls during COVID. She moved back into the area recently and my daughter invited her over. She seems perfectly nice, excitable, and talkative. She doesn’t seem to have other friends and so loves coming over.

But it is so hard having her in the house! She is loud. Top volume loud. She triggers migraines with her volume. When we ask her to “just lower her volume a bit” she does, but it never lasts long. I know this has to be a reason people don’t invite her over again. It’s that bad. I’m not going to keep her from coming over, but I do limit her visits.

A very large part of me wants to contact her parents. I’m concerned she might have hearing issues, or something else. But I also feel like it’s not my business. Besides organizing drop-off and pick-ups, I don’t really know the parents well enough to say something. Any advice on if I should say something and how to phrase it? Or any other ideas?

—Full-Throated Friend

Dear Throated,

If this child’s voice is really as piercingly, ear-splittingly, deafeningly clamorous as you say, as you’ve observed it in a few visits to your home, do you think that the child’s parents—with whom she lives all the rest of her life—have not yet noticed this fact? Do you think they would enjoy hearing the parent of, apparently, her only friend say, “Is there a medical reason your child is so annoying?” They would not.

Kids are sometimes really freaking loud. They lack impulse control, emotional regulation, and common sense. Buy some noise-cancelling headphones, hole up in the basement, and let your child invite her friend over. Once it is March, require them to go outside. If you receive a fine from the county for exceeding local noise ordinances, you can ask her parents to split it with you.

Dear Care and Feeding,

Every day my 9-year-old daughter “Phoebe” walks down the hill to the bus stop, then walks back home from the bus stop after school. Last year, my husband and I started letting her go to and from the bus stop on her own. However, over the past few weeks, she’s caught four wild rabbits and tried to bring them home. I’m not even sure how she’s doing it. They’re everywhere in the area, and Phoebe claims she just walks over to them and picks them up, but that’s clearly untrue, as the bunnies run away from anyone way before you get close enough to touch them. More importantly, she’s flat-out ignoring our instructions not to approach wild animals, and despite a grounding, she persists in doing so.

My husband thinks we should just get her a pet. We’ve talked about that for a bit, but it feels like this would be rewarding bad behavior. On the other hand, I’m not sure how to handle this long-term, and you’re not going to beat something with nothing. Is there anything I’m overlooking here? Some way of keeping Phoebe happy and not having her abduct local wildlife, while at the same time not rewarding her for doing so?

—Bunny Kidnapper

Dear Napper,

This is the most adorable letter this column has ever received. And perhaps the most astonishing! Four bunnies? I recently tried to pick up a chicken, like Link in Kakariko Village, and the blasted thing just ran away from me, clucking derisively. And somehow your daughter took four different rabbits unawares? A few questions: Is your daughter capable of remaining motionless for hours on end? Does she go unnoticed by home security systems? Have you considered enrolling her in ninja training atop some faraway mountain with a harsh, unforgiving master, so that she can make a lucrative career out of her superhuman skills?

Your daughter is tender of heart as well as unusually light of foot. If you have room in your life and in your home for a pet, you should indeed get her one. I wouldn’t worry that much about “rewarding” her bad behavior; you’ve already grounded her once, and what she needs is not more punishment but a diversion.  It is time for her to nurture something small and cute without necessarily bringing myxomatosis into the house.

Do not get her a python, though. I fear for the neighborhood’s rabbits if you do.

—Dan

My partner and I are parents to a sensitive, clever, and very extroverted 6-year-old. She has the occasional sleepover with her godparents, Steve and Linda. They are two childless friends of ours who adore and love our daughter very much. Our daughter always seems to have a fantastic time. I’m grateful that they’re sharing their time with her, as my partner and I don’t come from large families and our daughter doesn’t have any local grandparents. Linda has been a habitual cannabis smoker for as long as I’ve known her. I don’t judge or think less of her because of her drug use.