You label me, I label you

I posted another piece about why I don’t share photos of Wood Sprite on Facebook anymore, and some friends pointed out that the author seems to be a bit hypocritical when you see other posts she’s written. Fair enough, but I stand by the fact that our kids should get to decide when their online presences begin, who owns their photos and what is shared about them. And I think people who knee-jerk when I state this are just more interested in doing what’s fun for them: sharing pictures of their kids. I like to do it, too; I just don’t think it’s fair to my daughter.

Reactions to pieces like this remind me of when I went vegetarian and everyone seemed outraged by it; it’s as if your own personal choices are an affront to everyone else’s just because you’re different. I hate to whine, but man, is it always going to be like that? If so, I can deal with it, but it would be so much more pleasant otherwise. “Oh, interesting perspective! I might think about that.” Geez, how easy would that response be to issue instead? I’m going to make an effort to make that my primary response from now on…

Except when it comes to violence.

All of these older people with grown children posting disturbing memes about how proud they were to have been spanked—and how they blame today’s “disrespectful kids” on lack of spanking—really, really, really make me grateful that they’re not reproducing anymore. And the disrespectful kids they’re talking about are born from disrespect. Are you proud to have given kids fetal alcohol syndrome or to have smoked around kids, providing them with a litany of health issues as well? There is no shame in learning new things and moving on from the past—but there certainly is in promoting violence against children. I’ve seen these same people argue against hitting dogs (which I agree is heinous), yet they think it’s okay to hit people.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia