Repost: Judging other people's parenting choices -- on the Internet

I've contributed to the Orlando Sentinel's Moms at Work blog since 2010. The blog is changing content management systems and my old posts will no longer be available to the public, so I'm reposting them here, in the order that they were originally posted.


May 11, 2011

How would you respond if you knew someone had taken a picture of your child in public specifically to put the picture on a website dedicated to ridiculing a parenting choice you'd made?

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Too Big for Stroller, a website featuring pictures of children (albeit with their faces obscured) the photographer or writer judges to be too large to ride in a stroller.

This entire concept is unsettling, mostly because the writer, who admits that she has no children, has no idea why the "too large" children are in strollers.

Several of the pictures of children seem to have been captured at amusement parks, for example, which are places that can tire out adults and be completely brutal to small children. It's also possible that a child whose legs hang over a stroller is quite young but simply large for his or her age.  Although the writer says she's careful not to post photos of kids with physical disabilities, it's also entirely possible that some of the photographed children have some sort of physical, emotional or other developmental disability that the writer or photographer doesn't perceive.

And last, but certainly not least, I get that it can sometimes be fun to judge other people, but can we all agree that it's creepy to take pictures of other people's kids without permission, even if your aim isn't some sort of Mean Girls-style carping?

My daughter's still traditionally stroller-sized, but since my husband often isn't home by the time I take my afternoon run, I end up taking her along in a jogging stroller. I intend to do so for quite some time, and let me tell you, I'd be upset if a picture of her ended up on a website like this.

Wait, not upset. Livid. I'd be livid.

What do you think of this website? Are children in public fair game? Is it out of line to photograph other people's children and put the pictures on a website?

[h/t Jezebel]