"I feel horribly uncomfortable when parents kiss school-age kids on the lips."

Recentley, a series of images of a mum kissing her teenage son on the lips made my brain melt.

The images, published by The Daily Mail, showed a 42-year-old midwife puckering up in various poses to her 16-year-old son.

The redheaded son is shown leaning forward into her affectionate kisses, which reportedly “only last a second or two, unless Jordan is in a more jovial mood, in which case he draws it out longer and adds a ‘mwah’ sound.”

(You can see the original images here.)

If it took you a second to compose yourself after reading that account, you’re not alone. The article was sent to me by a friend with a two-word remark: “I’m… uncomfortable.”

The commentators on the article were more straightforward. “Totally disgusting,” wrote one.

“[K]issing small child on the lips you can easily transport bacteria,” said another.

“My family were kissers too and I always found it repulsive being made to kiss them on the lips,” a Mamamia reader weighed in on another post we published on lip-kissing.

Another commented: “Mouth kissing IS sexual. What is wrong with the cheek smooch?”

I’m normally a fairly each-to-their-own kind of person, and the logical part of my brain says: Look, if Jordan and Cheryl are happy with their arrangement, they should do whatever floats their boat.

But the instinctual part of my brain is shrieking: Nope, nope, NOPE.

Because looking back on my own teen years, I (and most other school-age kids) would have rather been grounded for the entire duration of Schoolies than be spotted by classmates puckering up to Mum.

There’s also the issue of whether lip-kissing your teen kids is teaching them odd boundaries. At least one expert has seized on this idea, pointing out that lip-kissing is just baffling to kids.

“It’s just too confusing,” claims Dr Charlotte Reznick, author of The Power of your Child’s Imagination: How to Transform Stress and Anxiety into Joy and Success.

“If mommy kisses daddy on the mouth and vice versa, what does that mean when I, a little girl or boy, kiss my parents on the mouth?”

She added that a teenage boy is particularly susceptible to confusion around the meaning of a lip kiss.

“A teenage boy is more aware of his sexuality than a child, so I wouldn’t recommend a mother kissing him on the lips,” she says.

“People don’t like to hear this but the lips are an erogenous zone and feel-good chemicals that are associated with sexual arousal – including serotonin and oxytocin – are released through lip-kissing.”

In Jordan’s case, he’s totally fine with it: “I will carry on kissing Mum when I’m an adult,” he tells The Daily Mail.

Apparently he even has a girlfriend called Daisy who is “unbothered by her boyfriend’s habit” despite the fact that “Cheryl and Jordan also hold hands in public – even at the school gates.”

So they’ve found an an arrangement that works for them all. Good for them.

But Jordan is just one kid. And I think I speak for 99.9% of Australian young people when I say:

Dear parents, don’t kiss your school-age children on the lips.

Can we agree on that?

What do you think about lip-kissing between parents and kids?