Friday, February 16, 2007

Parents Should Be Seen and Not Heard

That's an appropriate lead-in for this TIME article about parents inflicting their own sense of cool on their progeny. I found it at the car dealership whilst performing remedial winterization a few days back. The long faces of the other NE Ohio patrons were glued to the gloomy weather reports on the lobby TV and they were probably wondering why I was laughing so hard. (I even had them photocopy it for me which helped to take the sting out of the bill, oy....) Excerpt:

Full disclosure: I have two young sons, and if anything, Pollack gets my experience unsettlingly right. I live in Brooklyn, which along with the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles is the apparent epicenter of the hipster-parent movement. When one of my kids requests the Magnetic Fields on the iPod, I swell with pride as fathers of another era did when their sons completed touchdown passes. And if it's easy to criticize Pollack's preciousness, it's because, like a good, self-aware Gen Xer, he does it for you. "I wonder," he writes, "what Ariel Dorfman, Primo Levi and Arthur Koestler, men who wrote memoirs about actual struggle, would think about the genre of whiny new-parent hand-wringing."

I know it's not the main point here, but this comedic-yet-scary piece segues with my rantings about how bad an idea it is to "live out loud" on the Internet. Putting everything out there in a premature memoir is loosening up parents and future parents to turn their kids into Gerber babies without the revenue stream. They think of their kids as just another part of their life instead of people who should be given some privacy. Ever hear of search engines? The World Wide Web is not a family slide show in the basement, folks!

I've told commenters to my blogs that I'm pretty liberal about what they write in the comments, but start mentioning my kids names there and see how long they stay up. In my view, you can't complain about child molestors if your blog readers know their names and ages and where they're going to school. People need to learn how to discuss things in general terms and save the rest for private email discussions.

In saying this I realize that I am busting on some of the blogs I read and enjoy and I don't mean to offend them or suggest that they don't care about their children's safety. But if I can figure out how to search using target terms to identify virtually public family photo albums and weblogs, then families who put all this personal stuff out there must consider that this trend might be the greatest thing to happen to child predation in a great while. Fortunately the new version of blogger has a feature to configure a blog to be "by invitation only" and require a login; that is what I would suggest for family use.

4 comments:

  1. P

    I could not agree more. Why take a risk?

    I am the most uncool guy you would ever meet. I think the long hair and tattered filthy rags I wear to the office have put the kabosh on my corporate career. Even though I insist that I am generating much spiritual capital, and that I am constantly battling the forces of darkness, "management" tends to dismiss it. Punks!

    However, the novices seem to be generating some cool for themselves, despite their uncool dad. They like techno, and are partial to the Clash. They have their friends interested in gardening too. They are planting a secret garden at school right under the noses of the government employees. There's nothing better than a pack of six year olds sticking it to the man. When I tried to get them matching sets of filthy rags like me, they turned me down. See they're cool despite me.

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  2. So, I'm glad I did a little checking to see who left the random comment on my "family" blog...

    I thought I was doing well by not having last names, home town, etc...

    Anyway, thanks for the scare... "Pauli"

    Do you think girls who dress like sluts are just asking to be raped?

    Do you think that an african american man is just asking for trouble if he knowingly allows his skin to show before a member of the clan?

    What about a homosexual man who broadcasts to the hetrosexual men about his escapades... Is he asking for a beat-down?

    I hope I'm misunderstanding you... It almost sounds like your justifing the behavior of child molestors and sexual offenders because, well a person was stupid and posted family pictures on the web?!?!

    I'm not suggesting that a parent broadcast everything... but at some point we've got to stop allowing fear to govern our every move... When I was a child, my parents let me play in the front yard, ride my bike across town, walk home from school alone... now, I'd be a fool to allow my kids to do that...

    My point is it's not right that I should live in fear! But here's the question: how can a society move towards more healthy interactions/expectations? I know this much, we won't if we're willing to excuse the behavior of evil people because - well, you posted something on the net that you (the innocent) shouldn't have...

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  4. Do you think girls who dress like sluts are just asking to be raped?

    Which kind of rape? Statutory, yes.

    I hope I'm misunderstanding you... It almost sounds like your justifing the behavior of child molestors....

    Yes, you misunderstood. It sounds like you, like many people, have the "innocent as doves" part down pat. I'm just suggesting that we get the "wise as serpents" part as well. (ref)

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