My husband and I adopted our daughter in March 2009 and it was an open adoption with visits from the birth mother. Birth mother decided to take us to court and to make a long story short, we won the case. In October, the Judge recommended that we begin “contact” going slowly and cautiously and persue couseling to help establish boundaries. The relationship we have is very unsteady and unhealthy and persuing a relationship is not in the best interest for our daughter but we feel we need to try. Our couseling appointment is in February and was put off because of the birth mother dragging her feet. Since October, my husband and I have been sending letters and pictures of our little girl to get them up to speed since we were not allowed to talk during the case. Recently I have visited a facebook page that the birth family has with our daughters pictures that we sent to them all over it. They haven’t really told anyone that they placed her up for adoption and are fantasizing raising her. We are actually planning on discussing this with the birth mom at the counseling session. Has anyone dealt with this before? We live in the same town as the birth family and we feel we deserve a right to privacy. Is there a way to monitor this without accepting them as friends? Are there any laws that can protect our privacy. Am I over-reacting. I need any advice.
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I’m so sorry that your path has been so difficult. Please remember that you are all naturally feeling traumatized by the process and that it can make everything feel that much harder and more painful. Same goes for birth mom. I don’t think there’s any way to monitor their facebook or any laws that dictate what they can share. In other words, this might be a situation that you need to think about learning to live with. You can control the kinds of pictures you share knowing that they will be sharing them, too.
You also can’t control how the birth mom and her family process their loss including if they process it in ways that seem unhealthy to you. It’s great that you have a mediator in the counselor to help you all figure out your boundaries and I’m glad that you will be discussing this with that counselor. I am glad that you ARE pursuing a relationship and have faith that you can build one that IS in the best interest of your daughter. Just be careful with each other. It won’t always be this difficult — you are all feeling bruised by the adoption being contested and however angry you are at her birth mom, try to remember that she is struggling with her own anger and pain as well. None of you can really be at your best right now but you can start healing. Good luck to you.
As a first mom I thought I should submit my thoughts on this. First off, did you find this FB page by accident or on purpose?
I think it would be a very very good idea to friend her on FB, she might see it as a good sign.
Depending on how many friends she does have(and how many *you* have), being her FB friend does not seem like a big deal.
Are you thinking that your current FB contacts would question the association?
I would not worry about that. It’s likely that none of your FB friends would even notice, would they???
I must tell you personally, I have only a dozen FB friends and plan to keep it that way.
My son’s adoptive parents are the most important ones(sometimes I wish they could be the only ones), through FB they keep me updated without any special effort, it’s just easier for them and also good for me!!
This page does not seem like a big deal to me either, it’s not something I would do.
Although I do have a FB album entitled ‘my birthson’ but I doubt that his adoptive parents worry about that because I asked them and they seem not to care one way or the other whom I show pictures too. I think they trust me that way.
I must also say that that is likely because I have never contested their parenthood through pictures.
I don’t understand how one could do that, but it seems like you think that is so.
What kind of privacy do you think that this first mom is violating?
Is she showing pictures of your address, or anything else that would identify you to people that you don’t to be idenitfied too?
Personally, I would only object to any pictures of *myself* in particular being show, but I have never had to do that…
We are in a similar situation, except with our daughter’s birthfather. I am friends with him on facebook and one day decided to look at his albums and there were lots of pictures of both of our children. I was more surprised than anything. I do worry a little bit about privacy. I have very few photos on facebook myself and don’t have a ton of friends. Personally, I don’t see it a lot different than if it was a biological child and someone else put their photo in their album. Truthfully, there is not much you can do. You could send only actual photos and they would have to scan them to put them on facebook. But, remember if you have photos on facebook, they can copy them to their albums too.
@amom22, and seeing your photos in another friends album is a bad thing because…????
I am really confused as to what the problem is here, and how does it affect the ‘privacy’ of your families
BTW, you can control who sees your albums on facebook, even down to being able to see certain albums and not others.
Cindy,
I didn’t say seeing your photos in your friend’s album is a bad thing. I was surprised to see photo’s of the kids in our daughter’s birthfather’s album, but not mad. Like I said, it really is no different to me if it is in his facebook album or another friend’s. Also, there is really no difference to me if it is an adopted or biological child. I was just trying to give a little background here. As far as the privacy issue, I just am not sure I like the idea of strangers having access to my children’s photos. And, if you share files electronically, with anyone, they can put them in their FB albums and their friends can now see them, unless of course they limit access. But truthfully, most people don’t change the security.
There’s obviously more at issue here than people seeing pictures of kids, but I will speak to that issue. When I first created a facebook page, my husband was upset to see the kids’ pictures on there. Not for any reason having to do with adoption, but because he didn’t like the idea of strangers out there on the internet looking at our kids’ pictures. That’s a legitimate concern. But when I explained that only my friends would be allowed to see the pictures, and only those I trusted not to copy and share them with strangers, he didn’t mind. I prefer that it is up to me who sees pictures of my children, but I also realize that I release control of that when I share my pictures with anyone. Digital images can be copied, shared, or posted anywhere and hard copies can be converted to digital images. I can understand being bothered by people you don’t know seeing pics of your kids on someone else’s page–regardless of who posted the photos. I’ve had similar feelings about a situation we discovered where I shared photos with one person and they ended up on another person’s public web page. What’s the solution, though? Stop sharing photos? That would be a terrible thing for our family.
I think, as always, if it’s an issue worth worrying about, it warrants honest communication. For us, I decided it wasn’t worth bringing up. There was no identifying information in the pics posted outside of first names. I know my daughter’s FM has all kinds of pics of her on facebook, as does my mother-in-law. I don’t know all of their friends and it doesn’t really worry me much, but if I were concerned or thought the pics were inappropriate, I’d talk to either of them about it.
I would be extremely upset if I found the photos I mail to my son’s biological mother on her Facebook page without my permission. I don’t think you’re over-reacting. I also think you should just tell her you don’t feel comfortable posting pictures of your child for access for people you don’t know. If she wants to continue receiving photos, she should honor that request.
It’s not because she is a birthparent that I feel this way. It is because this is a person with a connection to your family that you are entrusting with photos of your children. You don’t know who she has friended on Facebook. You don’t know if she has facebook friends who are sex offenders, prisoners, etc.
The other issue you mention is that you feel she is claiming too much of a connection with your child, if I’m reading you right? Like she’s posting lots and lots of pictures of your kid, acting like this is her child she is raising? She’s probably just proud of your beautiful child, who she feels some connection to. I wouldn’t be too suspicious of her motives, but I would certainly ask her not to share your child’s photos with anyone beyond her immediate family and closest friends, and let her know that you think Facebook is not a good place for those photos. If she is not responsive, keep in mind you can also block her from viewing your photos without unfriending her. Remember, you are the parent here and you make the rules about what you think is appropriate for your child’s privacy. You can also block her from viewing specific photo albums but allow her to see others, so there is some customization of security you can control on your end. Good luck.
From what I have read, if you took the photos, they are covered by copyright law. Reproduction or distribution of more than 10 photos is a felony.
That seems a little extreme! A chat with first mom might be in order before invoking copyright law!
Posting pictures online seems to be a sensitive subject! I asked my daughter’s parents if I could post a few of the pictures they sent me on my private facebook page in a protected album. I promised to only put a few pictures and none of anybody but our daughter and they said no. I was very hurt. I understand not wanting your child’s pictures posted on the internet, but for most birth families pictures are all we have to show the connection with our child. Not being able to share that connection with our friends just plain hurts. Facebook is just an easy way to show those pictures to mulitple friends at one time without having to send them individually. I would talk to the birthparents about it, express your concerns and if it really bothers you ask them to remove the pictures or make them more private. But think about WHY you have such a problem with it. Is it because you truly think some pervert is on their page copying the pictures or because you were not asked before they posted the pictures? I don’t say this in a mean way but I feel that I gave my daughter’s parents my baby to complete their family. It has caused me so much pain (even though it was the right decision). I don’t think being allowed to post pictures of her to show my connection to her is too much to ask in return.
I’ll just add my quick two cents. My sister-in-law took all of her children’s photos off of FB and other public sites because she did, in fact, discover that someone had taken them and photoshopped them into a child pornographic site. Needless to say – she was horrified and furious.
The internet is a wonderful tool to allow us to share photos and information. It’s likewise wonderful that first moms and dads want to share photos with their friends and families, but if my sister-in-law’s experience is to be considered – photos are best shared via protected sites like Flickr.