Sharenting - posting pictures of children - not a completely new phenomenon.

 It’s almost February. January is almost over. It’s still cold. One of my nodding acquaintances told me this morning that she had just been away for a few days in and around Torquay where the temperature was a balmy 14° and they had blue sky and sunshine. Blue sky and sunshine we manage occasionally around here but 7° or 8° seems to be our current maximum temperature. Still, the days are gradually growing longer. Today is a changeable day, changing from grey and dull to blue sky and bright. So it goes.

Among the new words I come across from time to time is ‘sharenting’. This is the practice of putting lots of pictures of your children on social media. Some people make money out of it apparently. Others are pressured by family and friends to post those pictures, which seems like nonsense as it is quite possible to post those photos onto a closed group. Some people, like a friend of our son, refuse categorically to allow photos of their children to be posted on social media. Grandparents have always asked for photos of the grandchildren but it used to be actual photos, not digital stuff. Indeed, my bookshelves seem to be festooned with photos of various grandchildren at different stages in their lives.

I suppose children have always been “exploited”. I remember the ‘bonny baby’ competitors that were held in my childhood, the forerunners of the pageants such as ‘Little Miss Texas’. And images of children have long been used in advertising. Pears soap used Millais’ “Bubbles” in an early advertising campaign. 

I read that in 1958, the annual "Miss Pears" competition began, with the offer of £1,000 prize money, and the winner's image to be used on soapboxes and print advertisements for the year.

Even before the competition was instituted they sought out photos of children to use. I distinctly remember being told as a small child that ai could never be a “Pears” photo child as I had freckles. Pears were seeking a flawless image for their product and freckles were considered to be a blemish! Ah! The trials of being a ginger-haired freckly!

 Amazingly the competition continued until 1997, with parents entering their young daughters, many aged just three or four, resulting in 25,000 entries every year. Wow!

I confess to posting pictures of my grandchildren and occasionally copies of photos of my children, which I couldn’t post in their childhood as social media was non-existent.m. Mostly I try to be discreet. Today I have posted photos of art work produced by the two youngest, ages 9 and 6: a joint effort sunset picture 

and a solo effort by the youngest, with a whole story of a mole, complete with pink nose, popping up at sunrise to greet the day.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!