Monday Rant: Selfish Mothers

Clipart by Picsburg - http://free.clipartof.com/

I had a post ready for today that discussing the evolution of answering telephones, but then I heard about this post on Huffington Post, where a mother takes about her 5-year-old's diary.  The title of this post, "What I Found in My 5-Year-Old's Diary", caught my attention because I truly could not imagine what a 5-year-old would write that warranted this level of attention.

Turns out, it's not what the child wrote, it's what the author, and biological maternal parent, did that warrants all kinds of attention.

This female person - because I refuse to call that woman "mother" - listened to her daughter ask for privacy around her diary.  This little girl kept her diary key on a special ring, and even bought a special pen to write with.  No blurring of intentions or mixed up signals - the girl wanted a private space to write down her secrets, her thoughts, and whatever else came to mind.

Pop Quiz:

   You have a 5-year-old daughter who wants to write privately in her diary.  In response, you:

a) respect her privacy and never look in the girl's diary
b) ask her daughter for permission to look in the diary
c) read the diary without asking permission,
    but keep the contents of the diary private
d) read the diary without asking permission, take pictures of some diary pages,
    and post the pages on the Internet

If you answered "d", then you get to join the author of the post in the Parenting Hall of Shame. Because, sadly, that's exactly what this person did.

The article contains the woman's recounting of her daughter desire for privacy, her own insecurities, the violation of her daughter's trust, and then actual photos of pages from her daughter's diary.  After all, I guess if you're going to violate your kid's trust, do it in spades.

What makes this even worse, is that after several commenters point out that this person just broke her daughter's trust, the woman "explains" that she had a bad childhood and sad diaries, that she just had to make sure her daughter didn't have a sad diary, and that she made the world better by sharing the love and joy in her daughter's diary.

The selfishness inside this woman astounds me.

The entire article and her comment revolve around this woman and her insecurities, around the demons from her childhood that she clearly has not dealt with.  How dare she inflict her daughter to such a deep invasion of privacy, not only reading the diary but then publishing it on the Internet, because it made her feel better.

Parents do not abuse their children's trust and then attempt to justify the action because it gives said parent a warm fuzzy feeling.  If you can't find happiness on your own, please, for the love of all that's good in this world, do NOT have children.