If “sharenting” is a selfish and dangerous activity, then my Facebook feed is full of terrible humans.
For example, this morning, I launched the app and saw:
A former colleague’s toddler falling asleep in their car seat, mindlessly cramming crackers in her mouth.
A hospital shot of a newborn wrapped in the ubiquitous pink-and-blue blanket of a labour ward.
A video of a work friend’s toddler in a nappy, playing drums on dad’s head.
My own son and daughter rumbling with their uncles on a weekend visit.
I’ve seen the first words and first foods of children I have never met.
I’ve seen toddlers looking sad in hospital, little girls splashing in the backyard pool. Accidental swears. “Hilarious” backyard stacks.
"Sharenting" is what we do now. And apparently, we have no idea how dangerous and dumb it is.
So said the excellent writer Angela Mollard this weekend in a column for News Ltd that aimed a barb at one of the great sharenters of the modern age, Zoe Foster Blake.
In case you have been trapped under something heavy, here's a recap: Zoe and her husband Hamish Blake both have busy, red-hot careers. She's a beauty guru/writer/business owner. He, according to Zoe, is a tap-dancer, but you might know him as one half of Hamish and Andy. They are parents to Sonny Foster Blake, who is two and almost unreasonably cute.
Sonny features large in Zoe and Hamish's social feeds, which have a combined following of 1,107,000 people on Instagram.
A dedicated army obsess over his adorably-mangled pronunciation of words like "favourite" and come together to Share and Like every new missive from his parents (Sonny does not have his own social feeds, unlike Roxy Jacenko's much-followed daughter Pixie Curtis, or several of my friends' under-fives).
Scroll through to see pictures of Sonny Blake from Instagram. (Post continues after gallery.)
Sonny Blake
Still. In her story, Angela says:
In our child-centred age, parents' lives orbit about their children and their children's needs: when they are small, when they are football-playing lugs on a Saturday morning field, when they are doing their HSC, when they get their first job. Their milestones feel like our milestones, their achievements our own.
They are also, to our subjective eyes, the most photogenic, glorious creatures to have ever been created, and their every move is worthy of documentation.
That is parenting, and it has always been parenting. All that has changed now is that the family album lives in the palm of your hand, and can be shared, anytime, at the touch of a screen.
So why not do it?
Safety, of course, is the biggest stick used to beat any sharent. But here's the thing: You can't control what other people are thinking when they are looking at your children, any more than you can control what they are thinking when they're looking at you. Why should we airbrush children out of our lives for fear that someone, somewhere is triggered into a dark fantasy by their very existence? We can't give a twisted few that much agency over our lives.
Listen to what Zoe and Sonny do when Hamish is away. (Post continues after audio.)
What about the argument that a selfie might embarrass them? Might stop them getting a job one day? Show me this mythical future boss who turns down the most qualified applicant because there's an online picture of three-year-old them eating dirt and I'll show you an idiot. And, come on, parents are supposed to embarrass their children. They've been doing that since cave paintings of that time little Tommy patted a sabre-tooth tiger and lost a thumb.
Now our cave paintings live on social media.
Of all these issues, consent and permission are perhaps the most thorny. If your child asks you to stop posting pictures of them and you keep doing it, you are not a "sharent" - you're a horrible person.
And surely that's at the heart of this debate. Intent and context are everything. The vast majority of "sharents" - including Zoe and Hamish - have considered what they're doing and set their own boundaries. For one parent that might be no faces, for another no bare bums. Whatever, they come from a place of love.
Proud, unfettered parental love.
And that's not something to keep hidden away. We need more of it. Not less.
Anyway, have you seen how cute my son is? It would be almost criminal to keep that to myself.
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Top Comments
I love seeing photos of the children of friends and family and love that social media allows me to share events I otherwise wouldn't. But this story has raised issues that I think are worth considering. Privacy of the child is obviously one. As parents we feel we have the right to share any images of our children and I have seen arguments that suggest our children will be happy to have a full record of their life. That of course could be done in a photo album so of itself is not, in my view, enough of an argument. And, at some point, our children may start to feel embarrassed by their history being publicly available, which they've had no control over. There is also the argument around whether by posting, we're modelling good behaviour - because we're showing our kids how to post appropriately - or bad behaviour - because we're teaching our kids that life is not lived unless it's been seen to be lived by a large group of other people.
It's this last issue that troubles me the most. I've seen parents praise their kids' achievements publicly on Facebook, which I've no doubt has been done out of real pride for their achievement. But, is it necessary, and, is it in our children's best interests? Are we teaching kids that unless our lives and achievements are validated through a display on social media they are worth less, or that a parent's praise is worth less because the parent didn't say it to the world at large? We may argue that that's not what was intended and we're just trying to share a special moment with people, but I'm not sure that's always true.
For myself, I now question myself before posting anything about my children and ask, who would find this interesting, who did I think about when thinking of sharing the photo and what are my motives for sharing? I've found that for the most part now, I share photos with specific individuals by text.
great response - totally agree!
I disagree with embarrassing our children publically in any way. My personal rules for sharing photos and stories online is to only share content that glorifies my kids and presents them in a positive light or shows them at their best. I don't post embarrassing or humiliating content or caption pictures of them crying over seemingly silly things and I don't post pictures of them naked, and I never share private information about any medical conditions or disabilities.
The day either of my children ask me to take their pictures down is the day it will all come down.. and if my child asks me not to post something, I don't.