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This latest OAB Roundtable prompt was a tricky one. It’s all about privacy vs. blogging your heart out (so to speak):
This round’s topic was suggested by adoptive parent blogger Rebecca: privacy, blogging and open adoption. Figuring out boundaries is difficult when you write about your personal life. Any on-blog mention of family, friends or co-workers risks invading their privacy. Bloggers who write about or post pictures of their children are accused of exploitation. Where is the line between your own experience and other people’s personal lives? What information is yours to share and what rightfully belongs to someone else?
Add the overlapping relationships of open adoption to the mix and you’ve got yourself a potential ethical and personal mess. And yet it’s impossible to talk about one’s open adoption experience without mentioning the people involved. Where do you draw the lines–on your blog and in your personal life–and why? What, if anything, don’t you tell?
Every adoption blogger, just like every parent (I’m deliberately not specifying adoptive or birth parents here, although I write from the adoptive parent persepctive) has to work out the privacy vs. complete honesty issue for themselves. I know many well-known bloggers (well, okay, Dawn) who use full identifying information for everybody involved, including her child’s birth family. There’s nothing wrong with that. When I started, I used my daughter’s complete first name and lived to regret it. I began referring to her as Baby Girl not too long after I started blogging. Then Big Girl once she turned 3, and School Girl during her kindergarten year. So School Girl it is. Most of the members of our extended family are referred to by standard names: my Mum and Dad, my Sis, FiL, MiL, K’s stepmother, BiL/wife and nieces/nephew. All members of School Girl’s birth family are referred to by their first initials. I’ve noticed that’s the most common way to refer to family members besides yourself. Another way is to give people nicknames, which works as well.
The other problem is just how much to write about in public. I know for a fact that there are parents of School Girl’s classmates who are well aware of the existence of my other blog. Password-protected posts have worked very well for me; certainly when it comes to writing about visits, difficult conversations we’ve had at home, and more sensitive posts involving loss and grief. If there’s a topic that gives you concern at all, and leaving it unwritten isn’t an option, password-protection works very well indeed. It certainly gives you more control over who reads and who doesn’t. That has prevented much, much ugliness within my husband’s family during holiday visits.
Another thorny issue is putting up your child’s, or family’s, picture on The Internets. Keep in mind that taking a picture off doesn’t mean that nobody will have further access to that photo (Google never forgets), and let your best judgement and common sense be your guide. Having said that, I occasionally post pictures of School Girl online, usually as a model for a completed fiber project. Unless I had M or S’s consent, I would never ever post a picture of them online at all.
Every blogger is different. We operate from different backgrounds, different perspectives and have far different stories. Some of those stories demand more privacy by their very nature. In short, use your own instincts and best judgment determine how much to write about your own open adoption. Even with password protection, you never have absolute control over who reads your posts and sees your pictures. I’ve also found that being pseudonymous can be a very freeing experience; mostly in terms of what topics to pick and how openly you write about them.
