It seems that unhinged baby photos are what the people of the Internet are now loving.
A mother’s slideshow went viral on TikTok after she asked her baby’s daycare teacher to snap a few photos of her baby girl.
Marissa, known as @msmarissa7 on the social media platform, posted a video back in July featuring her newborn in awkward and hilarious positions.
The pictures were taken by the 2- to 3-month-old’s Generation Z teacher, paired with the soundtrack of Stevie Wonder’s song Isn’t She Lovely?
A mother asked her daycare’s Gen Z teacher to snap a few photos of her baby—and it wasn’t long before the pictures went viral
The video has amassed more than 1.5M views with close to 1,000 comments, all gushing over the unique angles and adorable faces.
While the caption did not explicitly state the teacher was from Gen Z, people caught on fairly quickly.
“I need to know if the teacher is a gen z,” someone commented, to which Marissa replied, “Yes she is haha.”
The 28-year-old mother told Newsweek that these pictures are now a daily occurrence, and said, “When I first received the photos, I thought that they were so funny.”
While she stated that she loves all of the photos, her personal favorite is the fourth slide.
“My favorite one is probably the one that makes her look like a DJ,” she said.
People on TikTok quickly blew up the video’s page with their comments
One person wrote, “Newborn pictures are so unhinged because they make the most wild facial expressions.”
“As a daycare teacher I appreciate these,” another said. “So real.”
“My husband does this!” read a third. “I work so hard to get beautiful pictures and he just waits til the kid is mid sneeze…”
“This is the cutest Megamind I’ve ever seen,” one joked.
The 28-year-old has now made her baby’s daycare photos into a seven-part series
@msmarissa7♬ original sound – motorolamotoyo_
After Marissa’s initial photos went viral, she started posting more “.5 baby” content.
On August 7, she posted a part two of the video and was met with many comments talking about the little girl, with one even saying, “I love this baby now PROTECT THIS CHILD AT ALL COSTS.”
The mother then replied, “Should we make it a series?”
Fast forward three months, and seven videos have now been posted, dedicated to the thread. Almost every clip has more than 100,000 views, with her most recent slideshow going live just yesterday.
Marissa told Newsweek that she wasn’t expecting her video to have such a big reaction on social media.
“I’m honestly surprised at how many people were shocked that a baby that young was in child care, but in America, you don’t get paid maternity leave, so you don’t really have an option,” she said.
Indeed, the U.S. maternity system lacks federally mandated laws surrounding new mothers and is one of the only developed countries in the world that cannot guarantee paid leave for parents.
@msmarissa7 #baby #crying #police #starbucks #work #daycare #boss ♬ original sound – Kardashian clips 🎬
Employers that granted parental leave dropped to 27% in 2022, compared to 44% in 2020, and one in four women (23%) were back to work two weeks after giving birth, according to SHRM and InTheseTimes, respectively.
Though Generation Z is mostly present on social media, they have garnered somewhat of a bad reputation
People born between 1997 and 2012 are labeled “Gen Z” and have grown up in a vastly changing world. While these young adults tend to thrive on social media apps such as TikTok, there is a growing concern about Gen Z’s “unseriousness.”
For example, the generation has been labeled “difficult,” or “hard to work with,” especially in the workplace. Resume Builder reports that nearly three in four managers believe Gen Z is more difficult to work with than other generations, which in turn means 38% of employers avoid hiring recent college graduates.
A few “stereotypical” behaviors of Gen Zers that catch the attention of those in the workplace include: struggling with mental health, insisting they close their laptops at 5pm sharp, and demanding a higher salary.
“Your baby’s teacher might be one of the funniest people alive,” read a comment
