Why no photos of my children?

You may have noticed that there are pho­tos of me on my posts, but there are not any of my chil­dren.  This is an inten­tion­al act on my part, and it is dif­fi­cult to accom­plish.  Most of my pho­tos these days fea­ture at least one of my children.

So, why no pic­tures?  The inter­net these days is awash with pho­tos of peo­ples’ chil­dren, and why not?  Parents are under­stand­ably proud of their lit­tle ones’ accom­plish­ments and want to show them off.  I do too, and I do post plen­ty of videos and pho­tos, but with access lim­it­ed to fam­i­ly.  I don’t even share with my friends.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it is right for every­body.  It is my per­son­al pref­er­ence to keep our chil­dren out of the pub­lic eye.  You may have noticed that I don’t even pub­licly post their names.  I feel that it is impor­tant that I give them the clean­est pos­si­ble slate as they grow up.  I believe post­ing their names and pho­tos pub­licly is not going to help them in the long run.

In our con­tem­po­rary soci­ety, young chil­dren are becom­ing increas­ing­ly exploit­ed.  It goes beyond the #MeToo move­ment and the bar­rage of ads that are increas­ing­ly unsuit­able for young chil­dren.  They are tar­get­ed by preda­tors, sex traf­fick­ers, cor­po­ra­tions.  It is our jobs as par­ents to love and pro­tect our children.

My Rules

So, what are my rules?  I’m okay with post­ing a pho­to that’s cropped to just the top of their heads or some­thing like that.  I’m still on the fence about post­ing pho­tos of their backs, so I haven’t done that yet.  (Well, hon­est­ly, I had one such pho­to pub­lished for about ten min­utes before I changed it.)  Blurred-out pho­tos are fine.  The ban­ner for this site has their names blurred out, for example.

I pray that some­day, in the future, my cau­tion will pay off and my chil­dren can begin their lives with a clean slate.  I pray for all the chil­dren out there in gen­er­al, that they may all live hap­py, free lives.