We filmed the most hilarious video of Mia this weekend.
Fresh out of the bathtub, she was prancing around the house wearing only a fuzzy kitty-cat hoodie towel draped over her head. She beamed at the camera as she darted here and there, her little paunchy belly sticking out as the pink terrycloth waved in the breeze behind her. She busied herself collecting a remote control and a couple of stuffed animals to bring over to Chickens, who was laying in his bed looking rather unnerved about the entire thing.
I thought it would be funny to share on the blog, so I went to upload the video. But the moment I named the file something like "naked kitty cat," I paused. And I thought of a question I will no doubt ask myself thousands of times in the next 20 years.
What about the perverts?
I realized I wasn't sure if this kind of thing is allowed. Posting naked pictures of your baby online? Is that a no-no?
So I turned to my online moms group, and I posed the question to them. They were unanimous in their opinion that, no, this isn't something you ought to do nowadays. But their reasoning absolutely floored me.
Maybe you already knew this, but I certainly did not: Evidently the real danger isn't perverts at all. The danger is that you, the parent, might be mistaken for a pervert and have your kids taken away from you for something as innocent as a bathtub picture.
They shared a story about two Arizona parents who took bathtub photos of their kids while on vacation. When a Walmart employee processing the film saw them and notified authorities, Child Protective Services took the three daughters away for a month. Another story is going on right this minute: A dad in California took his laptop in for service, and among his thousands of family photos were a several his unclothed kids playing in a bathtub and on the couch. A computer technician reported them to the sheriff's office, and seven months later the two kids are still in foster care, separated from their parents and from each other.
I don't even know what else to say about this. Except that it's a cryin' shame you'll never be able to admire the absolute perfection that is my baby's adorable little tushie, and that if this laptop ever goes on the fritz, we'll just have to back over it with the car and buy a new one. And that I am aghast that there is SOMETHING SCARIER THAN REAL, LIVE PERVS.
2 comments:
Oh, no! I just took video of Brock playing in the tub. I only posted online the one where he was covered by a washcloth. But I, too, never thought of this aspect. It's really too bad.
This has never occurred to me! How am I supposed to get those adorable, future blackmail naked photos? Guess I'd better invest in a photo printer. Boo.
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