Careful Now: The grandparents’ consent ad got it wrong, but the message still matters

Niamh O'Reilly

WHY HAS AN advert depicting excited, loving grandparents attempting to hug their grandchildren provoked such an epic level of online backlash that it has been reported on internationally in the New York Post and has since been removed and reviewed by its creators, The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre?

What in the Father Ted’s is going on here?

The ad, which has been running for a number of days as part of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC)’s We-Consent campaign, depicts two children opening their front door to their excited grandparents, who can’t wait to hug their grandchildren.

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The younger child leaps into granny and grandad’s arms and warmly embraces them. The older sister stands back from them, with an ‘I’m not sure face’ on her as the grandparents move towards her, puckering up for kisses with the strangest and creepiest use of fisheye camera work I’ve seen outside of a horror flick (if you slapped scary music in the background on this scene, it would freak anyone out). The granddaughter is not feeling the hugs and kisses at all, and the video ends with the tagline -

“Not everyone wants a hug. Even from the people who love them. Awkard? Maybe. Important? Absolutely.”

To say it got people’s backs up is an understatement. Online, critics were quick to label it as ‘woke nonsense.’ What enraged detractors even more was that the We-Consent campaign is funded by the Department of Justice. It is part of an ongoing campaign around consent education, and certain cohorts have interpreted it as the Government telling grandparents not to hug their grandchildren, or as implying they need to second-guess a simple hug now.

Suggestions which Jim O’Callaghan, Minister for Justice, was keen to dispel when he took to X shortly after the advert was removed, posting -

“The video produced by the DRCC involving grandparents does not represent the views of the Government. It was both inappropriate and demeaning to grandparents and has been removed by DRCC following my official’s engagement with them.

It goes without saying that having loving grandparents in a child’s life is an incredible positive thing to be cherished and not something to be campaigned against.”

Others have welcomed the advert, criticising the criticism, and pointing out that children shouldn’t be made to hug anyone they don’t want to, including grandparents, and anyone who cannot see that is ‘part of the problem.’

Where’s the middle ground?

Whichever side you land on, and it seems like there is no middle ground here between the ‘careful now’s and ‘the world has gone woke’ groupings, I think the one thing we can all agree on is that the ad using grandparents to get this important message across feels poorly conceived. If the Grey Army of several years ago has taught us all anything, it’s that you don’t come for the grandparents of this nation.

As a working parent, I’m acutely aware that I am only able to do so with the help of my own parents in terms of childcare. In many ways, the grandparents keep the economy running, allowing parents up and down the country to go to work every day, providing hours of unpaid childcare, because the costs for most families are so high.

Research from Trinity College Dublin (TILDA) indicates that roughly 47% of grandparents in the over-50 category provide some form of childcare to their grandchildren, with the rate climbing to nearly 60% for those aged between 65 and 74.

The advert was also strangely put together. I’ve watched it several times now, and it’s hard to figure out if it was meant to be funny, or it just came across that way unintentionally, with the crazed-looking close-up, fisheye shot of the grandparents’ well-meaning affection.

To be fair to DRCC, one of the most important groups in the country doing vital work for victims of sexual violence and abuse, they have come out today to say the ads were made on a small budget, so I doubt they had access to the Don Drapers of the ad world to workshop the best way to approach an important subject. And that’s fair. But images and visuals matter, and if you go about it the wrong way, you lose the message. Which is what seems to have happened here.

‘Give great auntie Maude a kiss there’

What the ad did do was immediately bring back memories of my own grandparents hugging me as a small child. I can distinctly remember my enthusiastic, loving nan giving me what I used to call ‘speakers’ when I came for a visit. Essentially, it was a hug coupled with a kiss right on the ear, which was given so loudly and with enough suction to make my ears ring for a good five minutes and sounded sort of like feedback on a speaker.

Did my poor nan mean to do that? No. Did I enjoy the partial deafness? No. But did I ask my nan not to do it again? Also, no. To be honest, it became a running joke. Today, I’d give anything to be able to go back and get a hug from my grandparents, speakers and all.

As a mum now, I am very aware of how precious the relationship is between my children and their grandparents. It’s one of the most gorgeous and sadly short-lived connections they will ever have, and it never ceases to make me smile when I see it. Mostly they love hugging their grandparents, but if there are times they don’t want to, they don’t have to, and that shouldn’t be such an offensive notion as to cause the level of backlash we’ve seen in the last few days.

While keyboard warriors online are busy virtually recreating scenes from The Simpsons where the residents of Springfield and Shelbyville face off with pitchforks and torches over the fine print, what gets missed in all the noise is the important stuff. Here, it’s talking to young people about the importance of consent.

Those conversations can be really hard to have, especially for parents of young people, but they are so necessary. We have seen constant reminders lately of violence against women and sexual assaults; just look at the recent allegations in the Cornell University case in the United States.

We’ve also seen some disappointing commentary from public figures like Michael O’Leary and comedian Vittorio Angelone where sexual assault was trivialised. Both later apologised, but for victims of sexual violence, words like these can cause real harm.

According to data from the CSO, 21% of adults who experienced unwanted contact sexual violence in childhood identified a family member or relative as the perpetrator. I’m not in any way suggesting that we tie grandparents to being potential perpetrators of sexual abuse; in fact, I think using them as the messengers in this ad was a wrong-footed move.

What we do need to do is give children the tools and sense of empowerment they need to speak up when they don’t want a physical interaction, even from a loved family member. That’s something that does need to be discussed, but it needs to be done in the right way, and it feels like the mechanics of this advert have us got it all wrong.

Niamh O’Reilly is a mum, writer and parenting columnist with TheJournal.ie.