Person Feeding Baby Emoji
U+1F9D1 U+200D U+1F37C:person_feeding_baby:Skin tonesGender variantsAbout Person Feeding Baby 🧑🍼
Person Feeding Baby () is part of the People & Body group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E13.0. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. Click copy above to grab it, paste it anywhere.
Works in iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, and every app that supports Unicode. Pick a skin tone above to customize it.
Often associated with baby, feed, feeding, and 4 more keywords.
Meaning varies across cultures, see cultural notes below.
Scroll down for the full story: meaning, trends, combos, and more.
How it looks
What does it mean?
A gender-neutral person feeding a baby with a bottle. 🧑🍼 exists because until 2020, the only emoji depicting childcare was 🤱 (Breastfeeding), which showed exclusively a woman nursing. The gap was obvious: fathers, non-binary parents, adoptive parents, and anyone who bottle-feeds had no way to represent themselves caring for a baby.
The emoji was proposed in document L2/19-336 and approved in Emoji 13.0 (2020). It arrived alongside gendered variants: 👨🍼 (Man Feeding Baby) and 👩🍼 (Woman Feeding Baby). Emojipedia's blog post announcing the update was titled "Now Anyone Can Feed a Baby," which captures the intent precisely.
The proposal explicitly stated three goals: complement existing breastfeeding and pregnant woman emojis, offer an emoji showing a man caring for a baby, and destigmatize bottle-feeding. That last point connects to the "fed is best" movement in parenting, which pushed back against the "breast is best" rhetoric that unintentionally shamed parents who couldn't or chose not to breastfeed.
On social media, 🧑🍼 is used by parents of all genders sharing baby content, new parent announcements, and the general "sleep-deprived but loving it" energy. It's especially popular among fathers and non-birthing parents who finally have an emoji that shows them in a caregiving role.
Parenting TikTok and Instagram use it heavily. "3 AM feeding 🧑🍼" is a universal parent experience caption. Baby milestone posts, nursery reveals, and "day in the life as a parent" content lean on this emoji. It shows up in baby shower invitations and birth announcements alongside 🍼 and 👶.
The emoji also gets metaphorical use. "Feeding my plant babies 🧑🍼🪴" and "nurturing this project 🧑🍼" extend the caregiving metaphor beyond literal babies. Anyone tending to something fragile and new can borrow this emoji.
In parenting communities specifically, the gender-neutral version (🧑🍼) is preferred for inclusive messaging. Parenting blogs and apps that serve all family structures use it as the default over the gendered variants.
A gender-neutral person feeding a baby with a bottle. It represents parenthood, caregiving, and the universal act of feeding an infant. It was created to include fathers, non-binary parents, adoptive parents, and bottle-feeding families who had no representation before 2020.
The Pregnancy, Baby, and Feeding Family
What it means from...
From a crush, 🧑🍼 means they're either a parent (identity), babysitting (activity), or making a joke about taking care of something. "I'm babysitting my nephew 🧑🍼" is sharing their day. If they use it metaphorically ("feeding my sourdough starter 🧑🍼"), they're being endearingly domestic.
Between partners, it's the parenting communication emoji. "Your turn 🧑🍼" for feeding shifts. "Look at us being parents 🧑🍼" for the shared wonder of it. Also used in the "should we?" baby discussion: "future us? 🧑🍼" is a loaded message.
Among friends, it signals parent life. "Can't come out tonight 🧑🍼" is the new-parent social exit. Friends without kids use it metaphorically for any nurturing activity: plants, pets, projects.
In family texts, it's pure love. "Grandpa doing his first feeding 🧑🍼" or photos of the new addition. This emoji gets the most genuine, unironic use in family group chats.
At work, "on parental leave 🧑🍼" or "back from paternity leave 🧑🍼" are the professional contexts. It normalizes caregiving leave for all genders in workplace communication.
From a stranger, it's parenthood identity. On dating apps, it means they have a kid or work with kids. In parenting forums, it's community identification.
Flirty or friendly?
🧑🍼 is not flirty. It's a parenting and caregiving emoji. The closest it gets to romantic territory is the "imagine us as parents" hypothetical between partners, but even that is more life-planning than flirtation.
- •Sharing baby photos or parenting updates? Pure pride, zero flirtation.
- •"That's going to be us someday 🧑🍼" from a partner? Relationship milestone conversation.
- •Metaphorical (feeding plants, projects)? Cute but domestic, not romantic.
- •In a dating bio with 🧑🍼? They're a parent. That's disclosure, not flirting.
He's a parent or caregiver. The man variant 👨🍼 is specifically significant because it was the first emoji showing a man caring for a baby. If he sends it, he's sharing his parenting experience, which is worth acknowledging.
Emoji combos
Family Google Trends: Search Interest 2020-2026
Origin story
Before 🧑🍼 existed, the emoji keyboard had a specific blind spot. The 🤱 Breastfeeding emoji (added in Emoji 5.0, 2017) showed a woman nursing, which was a win for breastfeeding representation. But it left out every other form of feeding a baby. Fathers, adoptive parents, non-binary parents, and bottle-feeding families had no visual representation in the childcare emoji space.
The proposal (L2/19-336) made the case with three arguments. First, it would complement existing emojis by adding bottle-feeding alongside breastfeeding. Second, it would show a man caring for a baby, which had zero representation in the emoji standard. Third, it would destigmatize bottle-feeding at a time when the "breast is best" messaging was making non-breastfeeding parents feel inadequate.
Google's Design Director explained the motivation directly: "Since a lack of breasts doesn't preclude you from nurturing your child, we want to introduce an emoji that everyone can use." The design guidelines recommended the baby appear swaddled to avoid requiring the baby's skin tone to match the adult's, which was a thoughtful inclusivity detail.
Emojipedia titled their announcement "Now Anyone Can Feed a Baby," capturing the corrective intent. The emoji shipped in 2020, arriving during COVID-19 lockdowns when many parents were home with their babies full-time. The timing was accidentally perfect.
Added in Emoji 13.0 (2020) as a ZWJ sequence: (Person) + (ZWJ) + (Baby Bottle). Proposed in L2/19-336. The 🍼 Baby Bottle was separately approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010). The 🤱 Breastfeeding emoji predated this by three years (Emoji 5.0, 2017).
Design history
Around the world
The bottle-feeding visual in 🧑🍼 carries different cultural weight depending on regional attitudes toward infant feeding. In countries where breastfeeding rates are high and heavily promoted (Norway, Sweden, much of sub-Saharan Africa), the bottle-feeding emoji might be less commonly used.
In the US and UK, where the "breast is best" vs. "fed is best" debate has been particularly heated, the emoji's existence is seen as an inclusivity win. Formula-feeding parents who felt judged by the breastfeeding-only emoji landscape now have visual representation.
The gender-neutral parenting angle is most relevant in Western progressive contexts where co-parenting, stay-at-home fathers, and non-binary parents are increasingly normalized. In cultures with more traditional gender roles around childcare, the 👨🍼 (man feeding baby) variant is the more culturally disruptive one.
In Japan, the emoji reads straightforwardly as parenting without the cultural debate layer. The feeding method isn't politically charged the same way.
Because the emoji standard only had 🤱 (breastfeeding woman) for childcare, leaving out fathers, non-binary parents, adoptive parents, and bottle-feeding families. The proposal explicitly aimed to complement breastfeeding, show men caring for babies, and destigmatize bottle-feeding.
It wasn't designed to be adversarial. The proposal explicitly aimed to 'complement' 🤱, not replace it. Having both emojis in the standard reflects the 'fed is best' stance: however you feed your baby is valid.
Gender variants
The 👨🍼 man feeding baby variant, added in Emoji 13.0 (2020), was one of the most symbolically important gender additions. Before it existed, parenting emojis were exclusively female. As Emojipedia's blog noted, "now anyone can feed a baby." The variant represents a cultural shift: paternity leave normalization, stay-at-home dads, and the dismantling of the assumption that childcare is women's work.
Often confused with
🤱 (Breastfeeding) shows a woman nursing. 🧑🍼 shows any person bottle-feeding. They represent different feeding methods and different gender assumptions. Both are valid ways to feed a baby, which is the whole point of having both emojis.
🤱 (Breastfeeding) shows a woman nursing. 🧑🍼 shows any person bottle-feeding. They represent different feeding methods and different gender assumptions. Both are valid ways to feed a baby, which is the whole point of having both emojis.
🍼 (Baby Bottle) is just the bottle object. 🧑🍼 is a person holding a baby and feeding them. Use 🍼 for baby supplies and 🧑🍼 for the act of caregiving.
🍼 (Baby Bottle) is just the bottle object. 🧑🍼 is a person holding a baby and feeding them. Use 🍼 for baby supplies and 🧑🍼 for the act of caregiving.
🤱 shows a woman breastfeeding. 🧑🍼 shows any person bottle-feeding. They represent different feeding methods. Both are valid, and having both in the emoji standard is the point: fed is best.
Do's and don'ts
- ✓Use for all types of parents: mothers, fathers, non-binary parents, adoptive parents
- ✓Include in baby announcements and parenting content
- ✓Use the gender-neutral version for inclusive communication
- ✓Support 'fed is best' messaging with it
- ✗Use it to shame breastfeeding parents or vice versa (the emoji exists to include, not exclude)
- ✗Assume the person feeding is the mother (that's the whole point of the gender-neutral version)
- ✗Send it unsolicited to someone who doesn't have kids as a 'when are you having babies?' hint
- ✗Forget that 🤱 exists too (breastfeeding representation matters alongside bottle-feeding)
Yes. It works for babysitters, aunts and uncles, caregivers, nannies, and anyone who takes care of a baby. The metaphorical use (nurturing plants, projects, or ideas) is also common and widely understood.
Caption ideas
Aesthetic sets
Type it as text
Fun facts
- •Before 🧑🍼 existed, the only childcare emoji was 🤱 (breastfeeding woman). Fathers, adoptive parents, and bottle-feeding families had zero visual representation in the emoji standard.
- •Google's Design Director explained the emoji's purpose: "Since a lack of breasts doesn't preclude you from nurturing your child, we want to introduce an emoji that everyone can use."
- •The Unicode design guidelines specified that the baby should appear swaddled to avoid requiring the baby's skin tone to match the adult's. This small detail made the emoji work across multiracial families and adoptive families.
- •🧑🍼 launched during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020), when many new parents were home with their babies full-time. The timing was unplanned but perfect.
- •Emojipedia's announcement was titled "Now Anyone Can Feed a Baby," which became one of the most shared emoji update headlines in 2020.
Common misinterpretations
- •Using 🧑🍼 in the breastfeeding vs. bottle-feeding debate can be read as taking sides. The emoji was designed to complement 🤱, not compete with it. Both exist because both feeding methods are valid.
- •Sending 🧑🍼 to someone who doesn't have children as a hint about having babies can feel presumptuous. The emoji is for representing existing caregiving, not pressuring future parenthood.
In pop culture
- •Emojipedia's "Now Anyone Can Feed a Baby" blog post became one of the most discussed emoji update announcements of 2020. The title captured both the literal new capability and the inclusivity statement.
- •The Bump and SheKnows covered the emoji as a parenting milestone, framing it within the "fed is best" movement that had been challenging breastfeeding-only messaging for years.
- •The original proposal (L2/19-336) is a primary source document that explicitly lists destigmatizing bottle-feeding as a goal. It's one of the more socially conscious Unicode proposals in the standard's history.
Trivia
For developers
- •ZWJ sequence: (Person) + (ZWJ) + (Baby Bottle). Total: 3 codepoints.
- •Supports skin tone modifiers on the person. The baby is typically swaddled (no separate skin tone), per Unicode guidelines.
- •Shortcodes: (GitHub, Slack).
- •Related emojis: 🤱 (Breastfeeding, ), 🍼 (Baby Bottle, ), 👶 (Baby, ).
- •Launched in 2020 during COVID lockdowns, which means early adoption coincided with a period when parents were home with babies more than usual.
See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.
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