Mother For Life

I was reading through random blogs late last night, when I stumbled upon one that bothered me. I won’t name it, and I want to state right now that I am not judging said blogger, simply tossing in my two cents worth. It was a blog from a mother where she wrote about her child’s pictures being copied by some random guy, and posted on a site with words written over the pictures. She talked about how upset her daughter was, and how much work she had to go through to get the site host to take them down. This mother then went on a rant about how wrong the guy was, how much her daughter suffered, and how disturbed she was.

Yes, the man in question was wrong. But what’s worse, the random stranger who steals little kids pics and puts them up on disturbing sites, or the irresponsible parents who post the pictures in the first place? I’ve said it before, you will find one public picture of my children on the Internet, and that is a far away blurry shot of half their bodies. Otherwise, my children’s pictures are private, meant for friends and family only. I drop on blogs constantly now where parents are writing about their child’s everyday routines, along with pictures. They post bathing suit pictures, tub pictures, pictures of their children in bed.

In my mind, its one thing if you want to post a picture or two of your child. It may not be my cup of tea, but to each his own. But when you start posting pictures that are showing less than full clothing (bath tub shots, bathing suit shots, etc..), is where I start having major issues. Many of these same offenders have their towns and states they live in posted right on their blog pages. Thanks for letting every pedophile out there know exactly how to find your child, way to make it a bit easier on them.

As if we as parents didn’t already have enough issues raising children in this day and age of technology, now many parents are tossing their innocent pictures right out there for the sickos of the world. We all know there are bad people out there, we tell our children every day not to talk to strangers. We watch our children on the Internet to make sure they aren’t handing out their information. We give them rules to follow in case of attempted attacks. Yet parents seem to think its okay to post cutsie naked baby bath tub pictures. 

Sure, most normal people see those pictures and go “Awww, how cute”. Then again, how willing are you to forget about the non normal people? The perverts who stalk the Internet for those cute seemingly innocent naked baby shots, and turn them into something disgusting for their own use? Stop being naive about it already. It’s one thing to talk about your children, I do it all the time. Giving advice, or simply talk about their day. But I will keep our special pictures to ourselves. I like my children right where they are, with me safe and sound.

I don’t want you to walk away from this blog thinking “What a condescending witch”.  I do want you to think more carefully about what you decide to share with millions of people online. It’s not only the pictures you post in blogs. Did you ever notice that unless you make your photobucket private, someone who clicks on one of your picture links can turn around and look at all of your pictures in photobucket? Or your Myspace, Yearbook, or even Flickr? All of these sites have the same issue, unless you make your pictures private, or your page private, everyone can see your children splashing away in the tub. Of course, it doesn’t help if you have 5,000 friends, and let them all see anyways. Just a few things for you to think on the next time you want to post pictures of little Susie in her new bikini.