Dad Buys Antique Chair for Daughter's Desk, Not Knowing What It Was Originally Used For

I don't know what it is about being a Dad and trying to enforce our very specific preferences on our children. I'm always trying to be cognizant of allowing my kids to form their own opinions and ways of doing things because chances are if they have a certain preference, it's more than likely deeply rooted in something that they need to do.

But there are some philosophies and opinions that I embrace as immutable facts of life. Like this dad's predilection for antique furniture.

This woman, once upon a time, asked her dad for a study chair for the desk in her room she could sit on and get work done. Instead of hitting up Amazon or Costco looking for an office chair, he decided to hit up his favorite antique furniture store to get her something with a bit more character for her to sit on.

For some reason, he decided to get her something that looked all sorts of uncomfortable and undeniably phallic like.

But this story doesn't just end with the "har har, that chair kinda looks like a you-know-what" punchline. Does this wooden slab look like a child's drawing come to life? Absolutely. Is the seat itself as wide as a piano bench and looks specially formulated for either my fat butt or someone with Kardashian-levels of hip and bum cosmetic enhancements? Yes again. And why does it have handles? In case you want to pretend like you're on a rocket ship or floating down from a jet's ejector seat?

Well, it turns out that there's a very specific reason for this...that's because when this woman's boyfriend came over her house, he saw the chair that she long replaced but still kept in her room (awww, she loves her Dad) and he couldn't help but shake his head and laugh. It turns out that her father had purchased her an old-school birthing chair.

As in a chair that was designed to help women get through labor.

There's a very likely possibility that a mid wife in someone's home, or nurses in some old-school hospital helped many a pregnant woman buckle down and push a baby out of their body, which would explain the handles on the side.

They even provided similar looking birthing chairs in side by side photos as an example.

In case you thought the story couldn't get any better, it does. Upon further inspection of their home, OP discovered that their father has some very specific tastes when it comes to furniture: he must have a subconscious love for birthing chairs of different cultures, because there was an African-style one in their living room and yet another in the father's study.

I'd like to think that this was all an accident and dad just seems to have a proclivity for this particular aesthetic. Or maybe he knew what he was doing all along and wanted to surround himself with chairs that have witnessed the miracle of life, on several occasions, first hand. While the sentiment might seem wholesome, something about it is kind of unnerving.

Whatever the reasoning, tons of people online sure got a kick out of it.

And why wouldn't they? It's not every day you come home and realize that your father's been littering your home with decorative pieces constructed to help usher babies into this world. If I were them, I'd take a very close look at any antique tongs he has lying around the kitchen or grill for those "really big" cuts of meat and vegetables...