Mother puts her child's bathing pic for sale on ebay

WHAT on earth!!!! I also saw this story this morning. Can anyone be that ignorant or indeed stupid? (see story below)

Obviously so because only yesterday I saw pictures that someone downloaded of their kids on flickr, which I felt uncomfortable with. They were taken in a homemade studio setting and the child was lying down on her side looking at the camera over her shoulder and the picture was entitled 'curves'.

What would be an endearing portrait of your child on your own wall at home or in a photoalbum, can take a whole new angle in cyberland.

Now there wasn't anything indecent in the picture but still.... (I won't post a link) I would err on the side of extreme caution regarding anything like that.

I have downloaded pics of my daughter to flickr but I have marked them private where only invited people, family and friends can view them.

Whether we like it or not, we have to be so careful now, because we have to do everything to protect our children.

I am finding it so hard to try to explain to my own daughter that a lot of the rules we have, while a pain in the arse, are because she needs to be safe and I need to know that she is safe, that is the bottom line.

But for a parent to deliberately do something like that, while pleading ignorance of what could be the consequences of their actions, beggars belief.

I do not like to judge parents, it's too easy to believe you know best and we are far too easy to judge. But like my Mum always says 'you never know what goes on in a couple's bedroom' so I think it follows that we can never really understand, appreciate or indeed know the dynamics of someone else's family.

The reality is that parenting can be a very difficult job but in this case I have to say, oh my god, what were you thinking woman?

Mother defends putting kiddie pics on eBay 20/07/2005 - 11:13:08
From breakingnews .ie

A mum who sold photographs of her bathing children on eBay insisted today: “I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong.”

Emotional mother of four Sara Fox was paid just £5.50 (€7.90) in a bid to raise cash for a family holiday in the United States before the pictures were withdrawn from auction after a barrage of internet complaints.

At her home in Ballymena, Co Antrim, she said: “With hindsight, I suppose it was ignorance on my part. But they were put there for a genuine reason and I never imagined it would have caused such a fuss.”

One of the photographs showed her 11-month old daughter naked in the bath with her young brother and sister.

With her husband due to lose his job, the auction was an attempt to fund a holiday back to her home state of Wisconsin where a fourth child, her seven-year-old daughter, lives.

Mrs Fox, 24, said: “Mothers allow their babies to model nappies, bathtime products and baby foods where there is more showing, and nobody takes offence with that.“I respect people’s rights to do what they want, but I maintain I wasn’t doing wrong showing anything of my children which you can’t see in a photograph on a child’s bottle, a packet of nappies or whatever.

“The woman who bought the pictures didn’t even want them. She did so because she sympathised with my plight – £5.50 isn’t going to get me very far and the way it’s looking, I’ll probably not make it back home.“I just thought it was worth a try. It was like desperation and I don’t know how I’m going to tell my daughter.”

Mrs Fox said it never occurred to her that paedophiles might access the site.

She added: “Maybe that’s my shortfall, maybe that’s my ignorance. Nothing clicked in me. A kid in a bathtub is a kid in a bathtub. You see them on TV and that’s okay. What I was doing was personal, but I did take the pictures off the sale.

“If I had put more thought into it; if I had put more thought into the photographs I was posting…obviously it was the bathtub one which put everybody off. When I put them on, I never thought in those terms.

“I was thinking: ‘My kids look absolutely beautiful and they’re together’. I couldn’t see how people could take such offence and I still maintain they still show them better that those who advertise baby products.”