I was sick all day yesterday. It actually began Tuesday night. After feeling all the stress and pressure of my numerous projects and things going on in my life, it finally caught up to me. A little break down. A few tears. A slight fever. And aching of the body. Luckily, I married one of the most wonderful man in the world. He listened to all my concerns, complaints, and whining. He pampered me while laid in bed sick. He forced me to do nothing but rest. He even brought breakfast in bed. And took time off work to take care of the kids. Amazing.
The Tylenol kicked in long enough for us to take a few Christmas family photos (me and my girls above). Then it was back to the chills and fever and aching body for me.
I did have time to read this article from the New York Times, “Guardians of Their Smiles.” It’s an article about the great debate of whether parents should post pictures of their children on the web and on social networking sites such as Facebook. In the article, some moms shared their experience of discovering other people reusing their children’s photos as their own or creating fake accounts.
Some parents are opposed to posting any pictures of their children on the web. Others don’t mind at all. From the article, “Some parents want to protect their children from what is unlikely but still tragically possible. Others say children will do best when learning to live with the realities of the Web.” Other parents come up with their own rules for posting. Making their blogs private. No bath photos of the kiddos. Changing the names of their children. So on and so forth.
This has always been a concern of mine. I am protective of my children and images of my children. I would like people to respect the privacy of my family. I like to feel like I am in control of what I post about my family and my photos. My biggest thing is people reusing my photos from my sites without my knowledge. But I am not totally against posting pictures of my family. It is similar to if a picture of my family came up in the newspaper or magazines. Or if I put my kids in modeling and they were in ads or something.
What do you think? What’s your opinion and view on this great debate?
Cute hair flowers! This article sounds like a must read. I’ve never been to worried about being public with my blog. I believe in good people,but don’t do obvious things like put up our last name or address, things of the sort. Also, I respect others that are private and understand their concern.
You look good for being sick. I don’t know that I would have looked that good even with Tylenol kicking in.
I am not sure where I stand on this issue. I am extremely concerned about others who are not family using the pictures of my kids for anything and then not being able to share my pictures with others of my family and friends who might only be able to keep up with us via my blog.
what a timely post for me! a few weeks ago, i found out that someone had stolen pictures of my daughter off my blog and had created a fake blog, using photos of my daughter, calling her by the name Courtney, pretending my daughter was HER daughter. it was actually really sickening, seeing my daughter’s eyes peering back at me from a different blog, with a different identity.
I wrote a series of posts about the experience. It was very eye-opening, and involved an attorney, the police, and a whole lot of drama.
I ended up moving my blog, changing my children’s names on my blog to nicknames, and doing a bunch of other stuff. It sucked- but I learned a lot!
Here are some of the relevant posts, if you’re interested:
http://www.theurthmama.com/2010/01/living-in-light_1738.html
http://www.theurthmama.com/2010/01/things-i-learned-from-courtney-gate.html
http://www.theurthmama.com/2010/01/things-i-learned-from-courtney-gate_27.html
-Erika
theurthmama.com
thanks for sharing your experience. that was the one thing i feared about having my children’s photos online. i am very selective about the pictures i put of them online. and i tend to watermark those. i try not to watermark other photos of just random things. but i do of my children.
tiffany- i know what you mean! my blog used to just be a way to share my photos with family, but then all of a sudden i started getting a lot of readers (mostly due to my pregnancy with identical twin girls and the subsequent loss of both of them late in my pregnancy).
now i watermark a lot of photos- i just have to after what happened with my oldest daughter. my blog was supposed to be a babybook/scrapbook for my family- but it’s morphed into something else…and now I find myself editing what I say on my blog- I don’t give quite the same details I used to, and I don’t indulge in the “milestones” as much as I did before.
I am not sure where I’m going with my blog – but the whole thing has certainly been a huge wakeup call for me. I am loving your blog- it seems like you have found a great balance to what you share, and what you write about.
-Erika
theurthmama.com
yes it’s true. i am weaning myself from watermarking all my photos. i only do it to photos of my children now. i’m trying to keep a professional feel on my site, even when it comes to photos. it’s a hard balance.