Is Your Child In Your Facebook Profile Pic?
Posted by Amber Robinson at 3:07 PM on May 18, 2009
If you use your child’s picture in your Facebook profile, Katie Roiphe thinks you are hiding behind your child’s identity.
In a piece for excellent new women’s interest site DoubleX, Roiphe writes, “If Betty Friedan were to review the Facebook habits of the over-30 set, she would turn over in her grave. By this I mean specifically the trend of women using photographs of their children instead of themselves as the main picture on their Facebook profiles… What, some future historian may very well ask, do all of these babies on our Facebook pages say about the construction of women’s identity at this particular moment in time?”
It’s an interesting question, and certainly provoked divided comments by DoubleX readers.
Is the trend symptomatic, asks Roiphe, of the kind of mummy-makeover you have when you are a parent, where toilet-training becomes an acceptable dinner-party topic and you start eschewing a pre-child wardrobe for trackie daks and pony-tails? The effect is to make one’s old, original self invisible.
Critics of the article claim Roiphe is over-reacting. Says Kelmick:
“These parents aren’t suppressing their true selves, or hiding or sacrificing their identities – they are celebrating their lives and sharing the all too temporary period that is the youth of their children. Let’s share in their joy, and not chastise them for it.”
Others say that having your kid in your profile pic is unprofessional and looks bad for future employers.
From a writer’s perspective I think it all comes down to who your audience is. If most of your Facebook friends are family and other mums from Playgroup, then daily status updates on your child’s toilet training efforts will probably be well received. If it’s mainly ex-colleagues and co-workers, it may pay to mix it up a little- and provide a pic of yourself so old contacts can actually find you.
My current profile pic is of me. But I have no qualms in uploading endless photos and videos of my delightful son – “friends” can feel free to ignore at their leisure.
Whose pic do you use?
There are currently no comments.