Why the French would call me a 'bad father'
Mauvais père.
That's what the name tag on my prison garb would say if I lived in France.
For the non-Francophiles among you, it means "bad father".
And my crime would be posting inappropriate and embarrassing photos of my young son, or Spawn, as I call him, on social media.
It's a fun way to allow my family and friends (all his posted photos have privacy restrictions) watch him grow up, from a toddler to the eight-year-old he is today.
And I can openly admit it here because, unlike the French, we don't have privacy laws here that make parents like me liable for a fine of up to 45,000 euros (S$70,000) or a year in jail for publicising intimate details of the private lives of our children.
Legal experts there also say that adults may be able to sue their parents for breaching their right to privacy by posting photos of them when they were younger.
I don't think parents here need to worry about their kids getting lawyers to sue them because they have posted unflattering pictures of their offspring.
In fact, if the offspring wanted to sue someone for this, they should (to paraphrase the local vernacular) "ownself sue ownself".
Anyone who has seen the social media feed of a millennial will agree.
SELFIE GENERATION
Just scroll through and you're bound to find all sorts of selfies that range from innocent outfit-of-the-day snaps to here's-what-I-look-like-after-10-Jagerbombs.
Often, the more outlandish the photo, the better the response from their audience.
So it doesn't seem like this generation of youth values privacy as much as the French legal system thinks it does.
Yes, there is a danger that paedophiles may target young children whose pictures are posted online. And that's where I think parents should exercise prudence in the type of photos they post of their children. After all, no parent posts pictures of their children with the intention of putting them in danger.
But allowing their grown-up offspring to sue them should they post pictures of them as children is a bit extreme.
And if someone does pursue that legal option and hauls Mummy and Daddy to court, then perhaps the family has bigger problems than not being able to manage their social media accounts.
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