Pictures of me in my underwear, though? Yeah, you'll keep seeing those.
Ever since we started the process of trying to get pregnant, I've given a lot of thought to what my baby's presence would be like on this blog. I've talked to parents and to non-parents, read articles, talked it over with my wife of course. And we've decided to largely keep our child's face offline – and that includes our private, non-blog-related social media profiles, too.
There are two big things that drew us to this conclusion:
- Safety. I can't imagine having to explain to my son that one of his baby photos ended up being traded in a child pornography ring. Fuck that conversation and everything about it. Everything on the internet is public and permanent, and I just can't see a way to protect him completely.
- Privacy. My child is (going to be) a person with rights and opinions and choices to make, like whether he wants to even be on social media at all. Of course there are plenty of choices we're making now and will continue to make on his behalf (vaccinations and vegetables come to mind), but this one is going to be left up to him.
The plan for now is that we're going to have some sort of password-protected image sharing (Flickr? Amazon Photos? What do you recommend?) for relatives and close friends who want to check in and see more frequent snaps of the babe. I'll share a photo when he's born. When he gets older, he'll be consulted before I post the rare snapshots.
If you do something different with your blog or social presence, I have to tell you, I don't care. You should feel empowered to do whatever you want. This is what works for us right now.
And if you're a reader who enjoys following our lives and is saddened by the thought that you won't get to see baby pictures, I'm sorry – and I'm not sorry. I'm so grateful you care about our family and adventures, and my child's safety and rights will always be more important to me than this blog.
