I think the chances of getting neonatal herpes through the methods people are talking about here is fairly low - not zero, and the consequences if you do are dire, but I would guess that most babies who have a parent with oral herpes won't catch it before they are out of the very dangerous unless they are doing *really* high-risk things - I don't have stats on neonatal specifically, but with genital herpes, even if you're regularly having unprotected sex with someone with an active genital infection, which is the highest possible exposure, there's still only about a 10% infection rate over a year. That's still super high, not worth the risk, but not up there in the "every mildly exposed person will get sick" range at all.

Once they're past the risk of neonatal herpes, my experience is that most kids with infected parents who aren't being super careful pick it up within a couple years, though. Some of my friends in elementary school thought cold sores were a normal thing everyone got because everyone in their family did; other friends in elementary school didn't even know what they were until a friend came to school with one because they'd never met someone who got them before. There weren't many in-between.