Frida is a baby brand widely used by parents, with products ranging from postnatal care for mothers to health gadgets for newborns, stocked in major retailers and frequently recommended in parenting circles. Over the years, the company has built a reputation for speaking candidly about the messy realities of early parenthood. In recent weeks, however, that reputation has come under scrutiny as past marketing campaigns resurfaced online.
Parents began raising concerns after several Instagram posts and product images circulated again on social media, with many criticising the brand’s repeated use of sexual innuendo in advertising for baby products. The backlash intensified in February when customers began calling for a boycott, arguing that the tone of the campaigns crossed a line.
One image showed the company’s 3-in-1 thermometer packaged with the phrase ‘How about a quickie?’ printed on the side of the box. Other posts promoted an electric nasal aspirator using similarly risqué wordplay and double entendres in both captions and instructions.
The tone appeared consistently across earlier posts. A 2020 photograph of a baby with sweat on its forehead teased an upcoming product launch in deliberately suggestive language, while other advertisements and demonstration videos relied on comparable innuendo. Additional images circulating online likewise paired photographs of babies with sexually suggestive captions. For many parents, the concern was not simply that the jokes were crude, but that they were attached to images of infants.
The company responded to criticism by defending its tone. In a statement to the New York Post on Friday 13 February, Frida said:
‘From the very beginning, Frida has used humour to talk about the real, raw, and messy parts of parenting that too often go unspoken. We do this because parenting can be isolating and overwhelming, and sometimes a moment of levity is what makes a hard experience feel human, shared, and survivable. Our products are designed for babies, but our voice has always been written for the adults caring for them. Our intention has consistently been to make awkward and difficult experiences feel lighter, more honest, and less isolating for parents.’
The company added that humour is subjective, stating that ‘what’s funny to one parent can feel like too much to another,’ and insisted it was never attempting to offend or push boundaries for shock value. It maintained that its tone is always tied to the products themselves and reflects ‘the real problem we are solving for families’.
Frida’s excuses failed to quell swelling outrage, sparking a second statement on 24 February 2026 saying they would retire certain ‘legacy assets’ and adjust their tone to ensure it ‘always meets the moment’. The company did not specify which materials would be removed, nor did it offer an apology.
Far from being a single misjudgement or the work of a rogue marketing employee, these campaigns were designed, approved and repeated across multiple years. The use of shocking sexual innuendos was not accidental: it was a deliberate marketing strategy used to promote products intended for babies. For many critics, the response felt thin, less a reflection on what went wrong than an attempt to weather the storm without admitting fault.
Beyond the controversy itself lies a deeper question: Why does humour like this appear in the first place? And why has it been normalised for so long that it took years for it to provoke widespread concern? Parenting is exhausting, messy and often absurd – and laughter is one of the ways families survive the early years. But humour depends on context. Some things can be joked about. Others require restraint. And while a saucy jibe may be appropriate in some circumstances, the world of baby products hardly seems one of them.
What unsettles many parents about these campaigns is not simply that they are crude, but that they blur a cultural boundary between adult sexuality and infancy. This marketing relies on taking language associated with sexual activity and attaching it directly to images and products involving babies.
That boundary matters. A healthy culture recognises that childhood occupies a unique space, one defined by vulnerability and innocence. The role of adults is to protect that space, not erode it. This concern has been voiced by a number of commentators, including Catholic influencer Chrissy Horton, who said in response to the controversy: ‘Everyone can take a joke. But this is not harmless humour. This desensitises people.’
Her point touches on something deeper than a single brand’s marketing strategy: cultural boundaries rarely collapse overnight. More often they erode gradually, through repeated acts of normalisation. A joke here, a slogan there, until what once seemed obviously inappropriate begins to feel merely edgy. If humour is the goal, why must it be sexual? Why should the joke depend on innuendo involving babies?
Online, some people have dismissed the criticism by pointing out that babies cannot read the captions. This misses the point entirely. The concern is not whether infants understand the joke – it is whether adults have lost the instinct to protect the sacredness of their innocence. A healthy culture does not simply avoid harming children, it actively guards the space around childhood with a certain reverence. When images of babies become vehicles for sexual innuendo, that protective boundary has already eroded. The issue is not literacy but whether we have lost the instinct to guard childhood’s innocence.
The steady rise of abortion and the widespread normalisation of contraception have already signalled a deeper cultural shift: a decline in the reverence for new life itself. When a society no longer sees children as sacred gifts but as lifestyle choices, the dignity surrounding infancy inevitably weakens. A marketing campaign built on sexual innuendo about babies is therefore not an isolated misjudgement but another symptom of that broader loss. If we want to rebuild a culture that truly protects children, it will require more than boycotts or social media outrage. It will require recovering a deeper conviction: that the innocence of children is sacred, and that a culture is ultimately judged by how it protects it.
