So, I'm curious about online privacy.
I started a separate thread so not to have mommymash feel any worse by what she's going though totally get she was harmlessly venting and learned a harsh internet lesson. Ugh. Been there.
My question is more to do with a few replies she got about her employers reading her entries about them on Hipmama. I posted that I would read a public journal of anyone who was the caretaker of my child. I have no guilt or problem with saying that. Am I nosy? No, EXCEPT when it comes to the person I entrust with my child.
I flip it to say that if one of you came here and posted a blog stating your babysitter was talking about/venting about you on a public site I think there would be outrage. No?
Just curious.
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at my sitter for venting the way mommymash did. she was, as rev. mother said, doing the equivalent of blowing off steam after work with her girlfriends. i certainly talked shit about the people i nannied for when i was 20 and if there had been social networking site i belonged to around back then, some of my bitching probably would have been accessible to the public at large, including my employers.
i don't fault her for bitching, nor do i don't fault them for snooping. because you can bet your butts i'd read the public blog of any caretaker of my child, without apology. would i fire mine for writing what mommymash wrote? i don't think so. but again, like rev mother wrote, they fired her because they were embarrassed and they seemed kinda sucky to begin with.
there was a member here a few years ago who was not a mother but said she liked hanging around our community because, she said, it helped her be a better nanny. she blogged about driving the kids she was in charge of around in her car without having insurance, and visiting adult websites on the family's computer, and a whole bunch of other unsavory things. and i sure as HELL would have fired that babysitter/nanny if i discovered that. no apologies.
you can also bet your butts i've been googling and poking around the myspace pages of the potential new sitters i interviewed last week. calling references is one thing, but seeing how someone presents themselves to their friends in a public forum is a whole 'nuther type of background check.
Yeah, I'd see it as poor character. Immaturity. And then depending on what she said, I may fire her, too. Its naive to think that this space is a private space - its anything BUT! When it comes to my kids, depending on what was said, if it was said about me or the work, I wouldn't feel good about that person working with/for me and my children knowing what they presented privately to me was being mocked publicly. Its not professional or considerate to bitch about me on-line when I'm entrusting you with the well being of my children, home and MY privacy. When I've let that person into MY LIFE and home. It would totally creep me out if my nanny did that. And it would creep me out more if there was intense frustration shown regarding really simple things. I don't think it is wrong for an employer to look on-line for information regarding an employee. ESPECIALLY when children are involved. If you want your privacy and private thoughts to remain private, keep it private - don't publish it online.
This sounds harsh, I know. And I'm open to being told I'm wrong, but not so sure anyone can convince me that I'm wrong about this. 
PS: and i think making judgmental statements about the people who did the firing is besides the point... who cares what their reasons are? Making them look bad to make yourself feel better, doesn't really change the facts of the situation, or help with learning the lesson in this unfortunate event, which is they had the right and the nanny made the wrong choice to vent publicly. yep, it does sucketh mammothly.
PSS: I think the term, "online privacy" is quite the oxymoron! Unless you are actually making it private by only allowing those invited to see/read, or blocking all readers out of your blog (which one can not do either, here), there is no such thing as online privacy.
You got me *before* I start in on the HYUGE book I got for Xmas on information ethics online for Xmas. That's probably a good thing. 
The thing is, there are several privacy issues going on here in addition to a life changing event of someone we share a community bond with. It helps if we break these things out separately because as posed the only realistic answer I can give is "Well, it depends."
We reach out and are sympathetic to mommymash because we understand she was venting, we recognize her as 'one of our own' & generally a good person. That's an emotional response of support to someone we know through a shared environment. Sure if the mothers were posting here instead, we'd probably reach out with sympathy to them for the same reasons. So in that sense, yes, there could possibly be outrage for the other side. It's the rationalization of emotion. Either side could be appropriate here, it depends on the context we're presented with.
I think it's easy to polarize discussions with "well what about the other side"? The fact of the matter is, we don't have enough of the other side's context in this case to know what else might have been going on. Maybe they actually are just really petty. Maybe they had some unstated expectations that weren't getting met? I don't know. I suck at theorizing about what might be though. It's why I try not to get into discussions online anymore -- the 'well, what if...'s are endless! So, taking out the emotional response to an online friend which lends itself to a particular assumption (she seems nice, I like her, their response seems weird, why can't they tell it was venting rather than whatever), we're left with the public vs privacy issues.
The actual privacy issues are really interesting & really pretty grey ethical areas, especially due to the additional issues of semi-anonymity. There are at least two issues & I'm probably missing several additional ones. The first is -- is a semi/mostly anonymous entity allowed to write about frustrating experiences with other people [family, employers, friends, random other interactions] -- what privacy are they giving up by writing about these situations. Can you semi/mostly anonymously write about your health issues? How does that interface with HIPPA? Is it now public information?
There's also the people being written about -- can they be identified from it? If they can, does it fall into the legal not grey area of being libelous? Slander? Harm to reputation? Even if they can't -- should they have a right not to be written about semi/mostly anonymously as long as they themselves are not named?
Would I read a blog/forum that my babysitter posts on that's publicly available? Sure! My own personal ethics would say if I have issues, I'd need to confront and try to resolve them prior to resorting to firing (barring reasonable findings, like breaking house rules, lying about what they were doing with my kid, drugs on the job, etc), but venting about day to day frustrations? From where I stand, "Hey, I stumbled across this when you left yourself logged into my computer. I didn't realize you were frustrated by this -- what can we do to work through this." Unless it was the last straw & I was not happy with the service currently provided in which case, I might not mention that the online stuff was the nail in the coffin at all. But that's based on my ethics. Not everyone shares my ethics.
I'm TOTALLY nosy. What I do with the information I glean from my nosiness though is very highly regulated by my ethics on how I treat information about other people though. I'm very good at keeping other people's secrets and not so very good about keeping my own. I also have a personal set of ethics as to when information gleaned by my nosiness is valid to use & not use and for which reasons.
No. I'm not very good at only finding two sides to an issue. Or writing short posts. But I am *SO* looking forward to this book on information ethics. OMG!
That might have been a more complex analysis than you were looking for, but in my brain, those are the answers to the questions, implicit & explicit, as I interpreted them.
"Do not forget. Remember and warn."
-- Plaque fixed to the hollow shell of Sarajevo's National Library
"Do not forget. Remember and warn."
-- Plaque fixed to the hollow shell of Sarajevo's National Library
The book is: Information Ethics: Privacy, Property, and Power by Adam D. Moore. From Amazon:
This anthology focuses on the ethical issues surrounding information control in the broadest sense. Anglo-American institutions of intellectual property protect and restrict access to vast amounts of information. Ideas and expressions captured in music, movies, paintings, processes of manufacture, human genetic information, and the like are protected domestically and globally.
The ethical issues and tensions surrounding free speech and information control intersect in at least two important respects. First, the commons of thought and expression is threatened by institutions of copyright, patent, and trade secret. While institutions of intellectual property may be necessary for innovation and social progress they may also be detrimental when used by the privileged and economically advantaged to control information access, consumption, and expression. Second, free speech concerns have been allowed to trump privacy interests in all but the most egregious of cases.
At the same time, our ability to control access to information about ourselves--what some call "informational privacy"--is rapidly diminishing. Data mining and digital profiling are opening up what most would consider private domains for public consumption and manipulation.
Post-9/11, issues of national security have run headlong into individual rights to privacy and free speech concerns. While constitutional guarantees against unwarranted searches and seizures have been relaxed, access to vast amounts of information held by government agencies, libraries, and other information storehouses has been restricted in the name of national security.
Oh! Hey! He's teaching at the school I got my MLIS from! Neato!
See... catching a cheating spouse falls under (assuming my spouse) "breaking house rules". One ethical lapse here would definitely trump the other. Not my spouse? There is where it starts getting really murky & additional context would definitely be required! For me, anyway.
"Do not forget. Remember and warn."
-- Plaque fixed to the hollow shell of Sarajevo's National Library
My only issue with looking up people's blogs, myspace pages, FB, etc. is that employers may be using non-work related issues against the employee. If a potential employer sees me in a pic doing shots with a stripper (not that I do that, LOL!), is that really of the employer's business? Or is it his/her business that a white employee has a black boyfriend? Of course, the employer can find all of this out without the internet, but it's much easier to hide bigotry behind your computer screen.
I'm not sure I'm articulating myself well... I totally feel public blogs are public. I'm pretty nosey. But I personally do feel nosey when I read others' blogs. I wouldn't bring up info I found unless it was really, really damaging/dangerous.
Children, old people, vagabonds laugh easily and heartily: they have nothing to lose and hope for little.
Children, old people, vagabonds laugh easily and heartily: they have nothing to lose and hope for little.
WRT employers -- I've looked folks up that I've interviewed for positions. I assume they're doing the same for/to me. There are several partners of the company that employ me that are on my 'friends' in facebook, one of them a founding senior partner. I list hipmama & mamaphonic on my resume, and include my personal blog on my linked in profile. I don't just assume they're reading them, I know that they're reading them. Or ignoring them. But they're aware.
My rule of thumb for posting on the internet is not to post any thing I wouldn't say in front of my employers (unless it's locked down very tight on LJ). I'm pretty sure I say things that wouldn't fly with my grammas, but I hope from their seats in whatever comes after that they have a broader perspective and would grant me some leeway (Hi Grammas!). I assume family will find me, having had distant relatives contact me & ask questions (that was actually kind of interesting -- apparently I am the only one online ever that has mentioned a company that my great grandfather worked for & said distant relative was looking to find out more information about it!).
I am very apprehensive about how employers may use non-work related issues against employees, but that's an issue that predates the internet. I do think people need to be aware of the information that they make available online, and think about the fact that their behavior may end up online (hi pictures taken by friends posted by friends!)... It's an interesting and complex area of social interaction, for sure.
"Do not forget. Remember and warn."
-- Plaque fixed to the hollow shell of Sarajevo's National Library
I don't know why, because my curiousity about people offline is next to nil, must be part of my overall social weirdness. but I digress. I would probably 'go snooping' on a public blog my child care provider posted on, especially if it was on my computer, but I'd also take any shit-talking, excuse my language, in context with how they treated my child(ren). At the end of the day all the bad stuff mommymash said about her employers reflected her concern for their children. if that is not an excellent childcare provider, I don't know what is. She loved those kids and felt a great deal of concern for them.
online privacy is a joke but so is offline privacy. Anybody can find out anything about you at all and most everything is done online anyway, including money stuff. I recall this one job I had (not bigboxcorp where I work now) where customers would call in to make a payment because they didn't trust doing it online. We just processed their payment via the same online system!! I'd try to explain it to people so they would just do it online next time and save themselves time calling in, but they couldn't/wouldn't/didn't get it.
family earthprint
Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for kindness. ~Seneca
You must be my sister in social weirdness. I find it very awkward to ask for details IRL on personal stuff that comes up in the course of conversation where it would probably even be socially appropriate... but it just seems like... they'd tell me if they wanted to go into detail on it? Sometimes I'm bold and ask, but a lot of the time, I kind of defer to my assumption that they'd share if they wanted to. That said, I'm nosy, but I stop short of google-stalking (and if someone doesn't mention something in IRL conversation, that's not a trigger for me to go a googling for it).
Privacy has gone from being public information as private through obscurity (who's going to hoof down to the local courthouse to look at your background history unless you have a pretty good reason?) to public and easily available. As far as "private" private info goes (health, financial, etc), it comes down to who is authorized to see that information and what are their privacy rules around it & how ethically do they stick to that & where is the potential risk for exposure.
Ok. Words are starting to go bye-bye... There's an expectation about what is privacy & what should be private & where should be private & not everyone in this society is seeing eye to eye on any of those things, much less the ethics around acting on those things.
"Do not forget. Remember and warn."
-- Plaque fixed to the hollow shell of Sarajevo's National Library
This is a public forum. There is no privacy implied or otherwise here. I know the sense of security of "anonymous" online posting is real to alot of people but truthfully you may as well stand in the middle of town square with a loudspeaker and shout whatever it is you're saying or post it on a billboard. You'll actually reach fewer people that way. What they read was on a public forum not personal email and they weren't eavesdropping on a conversation. They checked THEIR computers and read what was posted on a PUBLIC board by someone they trusted w/ their children and their home. Maybe they overreacted I don't know but whats put out in public is there for the world to see regardless of innocent intentions.
As far as snooping goes I check out the people I hire at my office why on earth wouldn't I check out the people I let in my home and around my child? I don't think its snooping. Now if I hacked their email or cell phones or sat in front of their house and photographed the people they talked to thats one thing. That is snooping an invasion.
The point is you can't invade someone's privacy if they aren't keeping it private. Modern technology makes the world VERY VERY tiny and very open. Its something we all have to deal with.
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
-James Baldwin
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
~Jack London
now, i'll openly state that i can be pretty damn nosy. i'm not proud of it, and it's something i work on alot. but i do my fair share of myspace lurking and stuff like that; one time adam even left himself logged into myspace from my computer and i read his entire mailbox, which in retrospect doesn't say alot for my level of maturity or self-esteem. i felt like crap for awhile afterward because i obviously didn't find anything bad, and i felt like i had totally betrayed his trust.
and when it comes to the emplyer/employee relationship, i do think there should *ideally* be some level of trust and respect that trumps the urge to snoop. for example, in my situation, my bosses didn't snoop because they had any reason to think that i wasn't taking care of their children in a loving, responsible, respectful way. i think they snooped just for the sake of snooping, just because they had the chance to. would i have done the same thing??? maybe. probably. but i think i would have also had that little voice telling me "this isn't cool, amy. you trust this person. why are you doing this?" and if i found anything shitty about me, i WOULD be hurt. i WOULD feel betrayed. but i would also realize that my urge to snoop would be what had led to my hurt feelings, not any negative intention on anyone else's part.
like, when i read adam's inbox/outbox, if i had ever found a letter from one of his friends that said "so is amy still being a total bitch about you going out on christmas night?" i would've felt like shit...but i wouldn't have HAD to feel like shit if i hadn't snooped in the first place.
i do realize that breaking into someone's myspace account and reading a publically accessible blog ARE very different, but i think the bottom line remains the same: if you trust someone, you wouldn't have any reason to be reading their stuff in the first place.
and maybe that's what hurts me so much about what happened with my old job. they didn't read my blog because they suspected me of anything negative; and they didn't find anything negative, besides some venting (albeit VERY sarcastic and snippy) about frustrations i had with that job. i love those kids very much, and although my posts didn't portray a very positive attitude about my relationship with my bosses, my feelings toward and care of those kids never changed despite any issues i had with my bosses. do i understand that once the professional relationship is damaged in such a way, it should probably end?? absolutely. but do i wish that they had shown a little more self-control and respect for my private life?? definitely.
despite all my rambling here, bottom line: in this day and age, we can all easily snoop and find dirt on pretty much anyone in our lives. does that mean it's a good idea?? probably not. but it DOES mean that we all need to be *very* careful what we say, and where. i was very naive and irresponsible in the way i blogged here in the past, but i learned a valuable lesson. we could all afford to use a little discretion in our online conversations/posts, but i think we could all afford to use a little discretion in the way we use the internet to "check in" on people we know (myself included, obviously; little miss nosy over here has no qualms about admitting that maybe her own snooping in the past caused karma to come back and bite her in her unsuspecting butt!).
sorry for the ramble, this is obviously a loaded subject for me. who knows, if this hadn't recently happened to me i might have a very different outlook on the subject. i'm glad you posted this though, catmama, because it's a topic i think we could all benefit from acknowledging and discussing.
and they also get sitters sometimes so they are both with people other than myself for good chunks of time. Here's what I did/do: I checked references, interviewed people, looked at the other kids in the environment, researched other possibilities and finally came to a decision. I have faith that the people I entrust with my children are decent because I've done my homework and keep communication open. Now, if Tony starts coming in day after day complaining about his teacher like he did at his old school, I will pull him out of there like I did then. Similarly, if Simon starts being difficult to drop off at daycare and seems to hate it there when I pick him up I will find something else.
I do not, have never considered, and do not feel it is appropriate for me to hunt up these people online for several reasons. First, it would squander time I'd rather squander here. Second, I'd probably find nothing and last, suppose I came across something juicy like hipmama I might find out they like to use a diva cup, had an abortion at 15, identify as queer, have an asshole FAX and think I'm a dick. Those things have less than nothing to do with my children. If I drag my kids out of every situation where there's an adult who thinks I'm a dick we will be sitting home quite a bit creating unnecessary upheavals in their lives and offering up further proof that I'm a dick (to my children as well). I have faith that if/when I disappoint the people I deal with they will come forward and make their grievances known in a clear, reasonable manner to me if they deem it productive to do so. If any of the people I work with are using a fake name on some site and bitching about what a dick I am then that is going to come back on them because I will still be a dick when they next see me as I haven't been alerted to my dickhood.
If a mama came on here complaining that their nanny had complained about them on some site somewhere I'd offer support and try to not judge them or their nanny unless I was in a bad mood in which case I'd lash out on the nanny. If they both came to me at the same time and started complaining, I'd bust out Emily Post and figure what to do from there
That said, I don't know what mommymash said about them/herself on here as I've been busy and I only skimmed her blog about it before getting pissed at her employers and throwing some hate out at 'em.
***the United States is one of only four out of 168 countries studied to not have some form of paid family leave for new moms. We join Swaziland, Papua New Guinea, and Lesotho in not having that policy in place. ***
"I have faith that if/when I disappoint the people I deal with they will come forward and make their grievances known in a clear, reasonable manner to me if they deem it productive to do so. If any of the people I work with are using a fake name on some site and bitching about what a dick I am then that is going to come back on them because I will still be a dick when they next see me as I haven't been alerted to my dickhood."
This is were personal ethics make the play. I for the life of me can not imagine not having great re pore and relations with my nanny, giving her little to no reason to not approach me with a grievance and let it all hang out in the moment - we would be friends, but that is based on my ethics. However, if I felt that my relationship with her was strained (relationships with a nanny is WAY different than with a daycare/school environment in that you are inviting her into your home on a regular basis, so yeah, its important to really like the person), she wasn't honest with me for any reason, I felt distrustful or suspected shady behavior or attitude, I'd just fire her AFTER trying to open up dialogue and work things out, I wouldn't go online searching of info, either. Those are my ethics.
Now, with mommymash, I have no idea what their relationship was like and my only feeling about it is, well, they were on their computer (not searching the internet for her), saw her recent activity, checked it out, and found a huge surprise. Its not like they purposely went out to find stuff on her. So, ethically, it would have been far higher living of them to talk with her about it (IMO), but maybe the relationship wasn't that tight between them and they saw this as an excuse to fire her without feeling guilty for not contributing to the relationship. I dunno. I think personal ethics have everything to do with how the situation would be handled. Do I think they were in the wrong? NO. Was mommymash? No. but it was her mistake to use their computer for personal writing and HM, and that is all it really was - a mistake.
Mommymash! I love you, mama, this topic is so interesting and I am so sorry that it is brought up because of what happened with you. I know you'll find a better job, though! with folks you can really mesh with! I think these folks weren't very good at making you feel a part of their family. They thought they were buying you instead of inviting you into their home to care for their children, I bet. You are so worth having as a nanny! any family would be lucky to have you in their home with their children.
I have. The woman who watched my son for three years is wonderful. We paid her well, keep her involved in our son's life, taken her with us on vacation, given her lots of freedom (she can take our son anywhere she wants in her car etc), and yet I would never be fooled for a minute that she considers me her "friend."
This doesn't mean I'm not friendly. I am. And it doesn't mean she's not friendly. She is. But there's this power differential that all the kind words and well wishing in the world cannot erase. I am her employer. She is my employee. We are bound together by a love for my son, but at the end of the day he is *my* son. I call the shots. And I don't think its healthy for me to try to pretend otherwise.
Recognizing the power differential means that I am careful about her privacy. I don't pry even to the extent of asking about boyfriends etc. If she brings something up, I'm more than happy to chat, but I don't want her to feel like her life needs to be an open book to me. I respect her time. I don't expect her to enjoy spending time with my family out of the kindness of her heart - I pay her even if its a vacation / party setting. I like being treated like a professional. I'd have a fit if my congregation searched my internet history (as benign as it is) which is one of the reasons I use my own computer. I think of my nanny's internet history in the same way - and would never stoop to snooping - even if she did use our family computer. I think our boundaries help us to do that.
Because the power differential is so great Mommymash's employers were not entitled to check out her blogs in the same way one might check out a friend's. Their opportunity to check her out was before they hired her. After that if they had a concern they should have brought it up with her (it isn't Mommymash's job to instigate conversation if there is tension between parties - its theirs). Snooping is inappropriate.
And while we'd all like to hope that Mommymash could have brought up her issues with her employers directly, the power differential again comes into play. She has so much more to lose than her employers. I don't blame her for ranting on a blog, even if it would have been better for her personally to be more discrete. Who among us can truly say we would have been more direct? Until you've been in that position, you really can't know.
I've never had a nanny or been a nanny. *IF* I did have a nanny, and I stumbled across some cross opinions about me on the internet that she wrote from my computer (or checked on) I'd ask her about it, as uncomfortable as it would be, because of my position of power. I would let her know that I came across it and that I would appreciate if she kept her thoughts about my private life a little more private. I'd respect her right to have them, but would ask that she respect that I have feelings, too, and coming across that information hurt. Now, depending how she responded, would depend if I could continue inviting her into my home. I have a hard time viewing a person who spends a large amount of one on one time with my children as *just* and employee. And maybe, just maybe, if the people she nanny'ed for saw her as more than just an employee, the situation could have turned out much different.
Personally, I feel uncomfortable yielding a lot of power over a person, which is why I sucked as a retail manager. I think people can be in positions of power without holding it over other heads. People can operate from a position of power without needing to actually use that power or remind their employees of it, right? Even tho, that power dynamic is present because there are services rendered, the services rendered for caring for children is way different than someone coming to cut the bushes around your house. The relationship is different.
I understand that it is a "business relationship" between parent and nanny, but having a person do more than babysit for me, to be a part of my children's lives and my life, makes me feel like its so much more than just business... and that connection should be honored and respected by myself and the nanny.
I would never "snoop" but would feel totally in the right to snoop, being that this person is spending a lot of their time with my children. People give the SS#, DL, pee, hair, and even blood to get and keep a job. As an employer, if I suspect anything is off with a person, it is my right, for the protection of my home and children, to look into it - my responsibility. My ethics would determine what I would do with the information - and what the information was that I found would determine if I'd do anything at all.
How well do I need to know this person who is caring for my children? That is a very subjective question, some people may not need to know a lot, others - such as myself - would need to have a somewhat rounded honest feel about the person who was caring for my children. To me, being a nanny is more than just a job. However, I know for many people, its not, and for people who hire nanny's, it may or may not be - depends on that person. There really is no "right" answer, IMO, only a subjective one.
The not snooping and not being thought of as a douche bag are one in the same.
I don't care if my nanny doesn't agree with my family's choices or lifestyle - and I don't make it my business to judge her's. If she loves my son, keeps him safe, makes good choices while at my house, and shows up on time, that's what I care about.
"Stumbling" across information isn't hard to avoid. I wouldn't be facebook friends with my nanny and I wouldn't look for her on other sites. I wouldn't google her name. If I felt like I needed to do any of these things to satisfy my own curiosity I think that would be a sign that I had a problem. If I was worried about something she was doing, well, then we would need to talk.
If you don't want to engage in those kinds of conversations, then you have to be willing to fire your nanny. That's all there is to it.
"We are bound together by a love for my son, but at the end of the day he is *my* son. I call the shots. And I don't think its healthy for me to try to pretend otherwise."
Absolutely.
"And while we'd all like to hope that Mommymash could have brought up her issues with her employers directly, the power differential again comes into play. She has so much more to lose than her employers. I don't blame her for ranting on a blog, even if it would have been better for her personally to be more discrete. Who among us can truly say we would have been more direct?"
I'm not saying that mommymash should have brought up her issues with her employers directly. I agree with you that the power difference makes complaining about petty stuff to your employer not a good idea. However, its important to look at the situation from both sides. Both parties made that situation go down. To blame one party over the other is basically saying that mommymash shouldn't examine her responsibility in the situation - which I think she did. Mommymash is someone who I care for, so it is her emotional health that I am trying to contribute to. And sometimes, the way to do that is to acknowledge one's own responsibility in the situation. Yep, her employer didn't handle their business with her the same as many of us would have, yep, she deserves to vent, and yep, the choice to do it on her employer's computer where they could easily stumble across it, given the type of relationship she had with them... not the best choice.
If she didn't go on their computer, they prolly would have never thought to search for HM rants. she prolly never gave them a reason to feel they would even need to "check her out." KWIM?
Yes, absolutely, I would do a background check or ask a daycare about their results of a background check. I would meet the people who are staying with my kid and get to know them. I'd try to be cool to them and trust that they would let me know if anything was amiss.
What they do on their off time, and that somewhat includes those minutes while my kid is otherwise occupied; are theirs. (provided they aren't smoking, drinking, looking at pron, doing the sort of thing I would not do while hanging out with my kid - I expect someone I'm paying to be me, but more responsible)
Sure, I'd be alarmed if they were into kiddie pron or something. As long as nobody is being physically harmed or traumatized, basically as long as my babysitter is a decent person, I don't particularly give a shit what they are doing in their off time.
*disclaimer* I would not hire someone I knew to be a racist, sexist, abusive in any way; but even if they were bitching specifically about me, well... that wouldn't have much to do with my kid. Maybe I'm in a weird space about this, because my kid is weird and it would take a very special person to be a regular caregiver; but frankly as long as he's receiving good care - which is extremely difficult to come by for a kid like him - I'm not gonna judge, I'm not gonna bitch.
If someone I hired is using my kids computer then I'm going to be checking up on what is being accessed on that computer which is what it sounds like happened. And right or wrong, ethical or not when you post online the world has the opportunity to see it. Just because ethically or morally or plain decency dictates they shouldn't doesn't mean they won't. People sitting next to you in a restaurant shouldn't eavesdrop but they do. You don't want something known then don't post it online and certainly don't use someone elses computer to do it. It will always come back to bite you on the ass.
BTW I have software on my network that tracks my sons computer and logs EVERYTHING he does so regardless of what is deleted in the browser history whatnot I see every keystroke he makes. If I came across something like hipmama on his computer and didn't know what it was I'd check it out. Thats not snooping on the nanny thats snooping on him which I'm ok with.
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
-James Baldwin
This is an interesting topic. I don't think anyone can fault a parent for looking up the caretaker of their children online - be it nosiness or concern or a mixture of both. But it's pretty clear that this site is an online diary of sorts for the people who blog here so by going in and reading all of mommymash's posts, her employers were knowingly violating her privacy. Just because it's in a public forum online that they CAN read doesn't make it any better than reading a journal that she left at their house.
I don't think any of us can say that we've never given in to the temptation to snoop. I also don't think that any of us can say that we haven't regretted some of that snooping because we ended up finding out things that we didn't want to know. In my opinion, that's the price you pay for violating someone's privacy. As long as they didn't see anything in mommymash's blog that indicated that she was not caring for their children properly, her employers really didn't have the right to fire her, IMHO. They pryed into what their nanny believed to be her private thoughts and found out that sometimes she resents them and think they suck. That kind of serves them right.
DS goes to daycare 5 days a week while I work. If I ever stumbled onto an online blog of hers where she was venting about me, I would NEVER in a MILLION YEARS confront her on it, no matter how much it hurt me. I'd be too ashamed that I read the blog in the first place. If what she wrote REALLY bothered me then I might pull DS out of the daycare, but not without giving her proper notice to the decline in her income (probably 2 weeks or so) and she's always taken good care of my son - he loves it at daycare - so whatever my personal feelings towards her were, I wouldn't let what I had read in her blog prevent me from giving her a positive recommendation to another parent. KWIM?
We all should be careful about what we post online but when we're not as careful as we should be it only gives others a legal right to read what we've written; not a moral or ethical right.
When I was a kid my dad used to snoop in my room and read my journals; notes from my friends... anything he could get his hands on. It was his house so he had the legal right to do so but I still believe that it was morally wrong.
That's my $.02 anyways.
I like the way you put all this. You make a lot of good points.
I guess, for me, I am really stuck on the idea that a blog is "personal" when it is in reality very public. I also have a hard time making the connection between a personal handwritten journal that is in your personal space, and an on line blog/journal that anyone can read and is invited to read, KWIM? Tricky stuff.
I agree that people should be careful with what they write online - especially on a forum as public as hm. But again, just because anyone is ABLE to get on this site doesn't mean that they are necessarily invited to read the contents. At least not in the minds of a lot of people who post here. I mean, if I leave my blinds open at night and anyone can see in does it mean that I'm inviting people to do so? Wouldn't it be morally wrong for someone to, say, watch me undress without my knowledge? Sure - I SHOULD know to close the blinds and that I'm leaving myself vulnerable by not doing so, but we all let our guards down unwittingly sometimes.
Mommymash could have just as easily left a handwritten journal at her employer's home. That would be pretty careless but I wouldn't condone the employers reading the journal - even if they didn't know what it was at first. As sooon as they realized it was a personal diary they should've put it down.
This is a public forum but people write private and often intimate details of their lives here. We use screen names rather than real names and lots of details - like the names of third parties are generally left out (usually if a mama is talking about someone and uses their full name she will get called out on it). It's not like facebook where your full name is displayed and anyone can search for you. To find the hm blog of someone you know IRL, a person would have to do some investigating. Therein lies a big part of the problem. The site is public, sure, but if we didn't have any expectation of privacy then we'd all be using our real names. KWIM?
I know that if BD figured out who I am on HM and read all my posts, and then confronted me about all the times I vented about him - trying to make me out like the a**hole - I would be LIVID. I'd feel bad that he saw some of the things I said about him but mostly I'd be pissed off because that would be a serious violation of trust.
again, good points. but... how would someone know that HM was going to have stuff written about them unless they read it??? i mean, if its an online message board, aren't they, esp as mommas, really invited to read, lurk and participate? i mean, did they expect to find "dirt" or something negative about mommymash? prolly not. if anything, to give them the benefit of the doubt, they prolly found it interesting. would they have thought anything of it, or fired her, if there wasn't such specific stuff about them? we don't know. if she never spoke of them, would they have fired her for other parts of her life shared here. or was it the shock of finding out her real feelings displayed in a public space - which they are invited by default to lurk through? i just don't think on any level what they did was "wrong" - yeah, they could have handled themselves differently, they could have seen it as a sign to treat their nanny with more respect, but shit, can't blame them for reacting defensively or hurt.
*my cursing isn't meant to be aggressive or confrontational, just expressive.
"i mean, if its an online message board, aren't they, esp as mommas, really invited to read, lurk and participate?"
I think that's a really good point. Are mamas who come here not supposed to read any other posts, treat them as all private and just post their own thoughts? I do realize that the employers probably came here with the intent of "checking" on MM, not just perusing the site for the hell of it. But the fact that ANYONE can come here and read ANYTHING at any time means they can do that too, no matter why they are doing it. At least I think so. I don't think what they did was ethically or morally wrong.
Now, the instant firing for what they found, that's a whole other issue. I think that was a bit rash. But their right, I suppose.
Good point about them being mamas too. I guess I feel that these mamas should have recognized that while this site is public, many treat it as a journal to write their private thoughts - thoughts that they can't share with people IRL. I think that's clear from reading even just a few random posts. And OF COURSE I understand that they would be hurt by negative things that were written about them. However, since their names were not used and mommymash doesn't write under her own name it's not like she was defaming them. I even understand why they wouldn't want her taking care of their kids after that - not because she did something wrong but because it's uncomfortable and then there's tension, resentment, etc. No one wants that - especially in their relationship with their child's caregiver. But I don't think these moms had any right to call mommymash out like they did and make her feel like a bad person. Even if they stumbled upon the blog totally by mistake and halfway through it dawned on them that this was THEIR nanny who had written it, they should have recognized that they inadvertently read something that mommymash meant to be private (no matter how misguided or naive it may have been for her not to be more aware of how accessible the site and all of its contents are to anyone). That's a violation of privacy. If that's how it happened then they didn't do anything wrong, but her privacy was still violated. KWIM? Like, if you overhear a conversation by accident that's not your fault but you know that you've heard something that you weren't supposed to. When is it ok or appropriate to use that information against someone, I guess is the question.
I mean, what if these mamas were out at a restaurant and ran into mommymash, who was venting to a friend about work - similar things to what she wrote here but just verbally venting instead of writing them down? When you're out in public you never know who's standing behind you, after all. I mean, yeah, something written online is more concrete and lasting so I guess it has the potential to do more damage, but in this case I think the analogy is apt. If that's how it went down it would have been total bullsh*t for them to villify mommymash and fire her without notice or a chance to clear things up. Because even if it was unwittingly and without any malintent, they stumbled on a PRIVATE conversation that they were never meant to hear.
Fine if they couldn't have her work for them after what she wrote but that's their issue.
I think, for me, that if someone clearly INTENDS for something to be private - excluding things that are criminal or immoral/unethical - then it should be regarded as such. No matter how seemingly ridiculous that expectation of privacy might be. Mercury wrote below that the analogy should be if you write your private thoughts in someone else's notebook then of course they will read it. Ok, true. But it seems in this case that personal use of the computer was allowed. What if, similarly, the nanny in question was told that she could feel free to use things like stationary, etc. that were available within the home. What if she then found an empty notebook lying around and used some pages to write a letter to a friend while the kids were napping. And what if she meant to tear the pages out but forgot? If you're the mom and you pick up that notebook later on and you see the letter - it's in YOUR notebook so obviously you have the right to read it if you so choose. But once you realize it's a personal letter that your nanny has written, and most likely left in there by mistake, do you continue reading because it was written in a notebook that you own and you can or do you put it down once you realize what it is because you know it wasn't meant for you to see? I'm not unrealistic - I know that human nature is such that it would take EXTREME restraint not to continue reading - especially if you saw something that was about you. In the case I describe, I probably would not be able to resist reading the letter. But even though it was in MY notebook in MY house, I would not leave the experience with a feeling of riteous indignance but with regret that I gave into my temptation to read my nanny's thoughts and saw something that hurt my feelings. I think I would regard that hurt as at least 50% my fault. That's all I'm saying.
Damn, I go on FOREVER sometimes! Sorry about that.
Hey, that's alright, I liked reading it! I agree with some of what you are saying, and some I don't. I just don't have the energy or time right now to detail, tho I wish I did! I'll keep thinking about this convo long after this tread disappears into the history of HM!
I get what you're saying, and logically it all makes sense. But that logic is requiring everyone to have the same ethics and morals. And we all know that's far from the case. Where someone might put that journal (or close that web browser) immediately after realizing what it was, more people would keep reading. And again, I personally do no think that anything written here on HM is private. It's simply not. It may be something you don't intend to share with other people in your life, I've definitely written my fair share of that. But I can honestly say that if someone in my life discovered this site and read all of my posts then I would not fault them for doing something wrong or horrible. Because I wrote those things knowing that a crap ton of strangers would read my "private" thoughts. So what makes me think that just as easily someone I know might not read them?
See, for me there are two totally separate issues here. One, should/can/do/will people read or hear or whatever other people's venting or bitching? And two, should someone act on what they've discovered. No one would be angry at an employer walking up on someone in a restaurant and hearing something by accident. Where the problem comes in is what they do with that info, not how they got that info. Two separate issues, see? I agree that someone should no be fired just for venting or bitching or whatever. At least not without a chance to explain or the opportunity to talk and work it out. But again, not everyone has the same ethics. I would hope I would be able to get past the anger of what I had read and to really think about why MM had posted it. Hopefully I would be able to see that it was just harmless venting, and we all do it. Honestly, I probably wouldn't even bring it up, cause I'm a wuss when it comes to confrontation!
But I just don't believe they were wrong in reading it. I just don't. But that's just me, we all have our own opinions (which we know well!), and I think this is a good discussion.
(I go on forever, too! )
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I'm all about people blowing off steam (LORD knows I vent) but even harmless sht would probably get to me if I read it. Like, say my nanny (lol, like I have one) said online, "My employer's ass is as big as a house. She really needs to stop eating the Little Susie's"
I'm not sure I'd be able to let it go.
However, if she were steller with my kid, I'd most likely suck it up.
Maybe I'd make sure I'd hide the Little Susie's.