“No emoticons were upset in the writing of this post.”
In Slate, renowned photographer Jill Greenberg returns to the topic that gained her unwanted notoriety in May: her exhibition of photographs of children crying their little eyes out. Greenberg revealed at the time that she captured the powerful photographs by giving the very young children lollipops or something else they liked or wanted and then having family members ask the kids to return the item. Strangely, as Drew Curtis’Fark, one of my favorite web sources for stories is wont to say, some people had a problem with this.
Greenberg revisits the issue because she has a book of the weepy photographs coming out. Seldom does one read a more casual, “What is the matter with people?”, utterly clueless display of invalid rationalizations for unethical conduct as Greenberg belches out. Unfortunately, another tendency illustrated by the article is far more common: a news sources examination of an ethics issue without any apparent sensitivity or understanding of the ethics issues involved.
Here are Greenberg’s rationalizations, or at least the ones she gave to Slate. I’m sure she has many more.
- The Trivial Trap, or “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” “I have two children of my own. Crying is not evidence of pain or any real suffering. It’s really just the way children communicate.” Ah. Not real suffering. Then it’s all right, then. The bottom line is that Greenberg is intentionally upsetting the children, who, it can be fairly said, are less anxious and happier when they are not crying. Children who are teased, frightened or otherwise made uncomfortable can also be said not to be in pain or “real” suffering. It’s still cruel, and an abuse of power, to treat them this way. Come to think of it, Greenberg could make the same argument about some of the models in child pornography. Would she, I wonder?
- “Everybody does it” and the “They’re Just as Bad” Excuse. “Making children cry for a photographer can be considered mean. But I would say that making children laugh and show off their jeans for an apparel ad is just as exploitative and less natural.” And, I suppose, making a Bangladesh child cry by taking food from her to make her cry is just as exploitative and more natural than giving her food to make her smile, because, after all, she’s usually starving anyway.
- The Saint’s Excuse or “It’s for a good cause” a.k.a “The ends justify the means.” Slate: “The still image continues to have a ton of strength. An image taken out of context from one fraction of a second to the next can tell a story, and if photographers are looking to tell a certain story, they can curate those slices of time to their advantage. What’s weird about the images is they seemingly can be applied to all these random disparate causes. My husband was saying they’re like emoticons.” True, Jill, but those little smiley faces don’t have to be tortured to get them to frown or cry, because, unlike babies, they aren’t real human beings.
The bottom line is that Greenberg made money and got a lot of ink by making children unhappy, so she can’t see why anyone would argue that the conduct wasn’t justified, and based on the article, neither does Slate or its writer, Jordan G. Teicher. The photographer’s methods are, of course, obviously and indisputably unethical:
- She exploited the children for her own agendas and benefit.
- She abused her superior power over the children to get the reaction she wants.
- She induced anxiety in another, causing needless harm.
- She created a product, the photo, which memorializes a form of child abuse.
- She recruited the children’s parents into assisting in the exploitation for the artist’s purposes, rather that doing their job as parents, thus inducing a breach of loyalty and a betrayal of parental duty.
- She created and profited from a materialization of an unethical abuse of a child, which is identical to what child pornography does.
- She encouraged others to create similar photographs, which will be created, in some cases, with even less humane methods.
Of course her methods were unethical. She deserves every bit of criticism and hate mail that she has received. But the sophisticates, like Slate and others, just shrug off the concern as foolishness, much ado about nothing. So she made kids cry! They cry all the time! What matters is that she got some great pictures!
Many of society’s problems arise from the fact that our media can’t recognize, and thus encourages, unethical behavior, even obvious examples like making little children cry for fame and fortune.
__________________________
Pointer: Alexander Cheezem
Sources: Bored Panda, Slate, Fully M
Ethics Alarms 
I couldn’t agree more.
Perhaps a photographer could water board her, or maybe create a scenario that convinces her that a family member was in a fatal accident. Then after taking pictures lets her up or informs her of the trick and remind her that no permanent damage occurred.
You idiots DO realize we are talking about taking a lollipop away from a kid, right? No one beat them. No one water boarded them. You people are crazy, and I can’t understand how anyone with a modicum of sense would think it is okay to compare this photographer to someone who creates child porn and sexually abuses children. Taking high fructose corn syrup candy away from a toddler is NOT abuse. You people must have awful kids, because you would never discipline them or deny them anything, even if it is bad for them, lest the tears come. Get some perspective, you lunatics.
Did anyone get a full count of weak analogies in this?
Or how about the general inability to understand the purpose of analogies to begin with?
Or how about the shifting of terms in his second the last sentence in which he changes out “abuse” for “discipline” and then pretends that our condemnation of abuse is the same as us condemning of discipline?
Should drive-by postings even be bothered with picking apart?
She’s also bullying both child and parents by using her fame as a photographer to get her way.
Blame the parents, if you dare. They are the ones exchanging cash for punishing their children (if asking a child to return something just given to them is considered punishment), so a photographer can record an emotion… Child models are probably put through a lot more demands than whatever Greenburg is doing.
So if the parents don’t have an issue with photographer demands, who are we to judge? One extreme are the Amish who absolutely resist any kind of photography and the other are abusive parents who do not care how their children are filmed, in exchange for money.
Don’t think Greenburg or the parents are crossing any line that could be considered abusive…. but the world of popular opinion (i.e. sales) will make that decision.
“So if the parents don’t have an issue with photographer demands, who are we to judge?”
Are you fucking kidding me?
My point is that your culture and religion shape how you raise your children. Strictly religious people of any faith would most likely object to having their children used for any recreational purpose like this, whether or not the candy ploy is used. You or someone else may draw the line differently.. So who is right?
Really? Some cultures and religions don’t believe in giving medicine to children. By your logic, we can’t judge them.
Can’t we blame both? Because I totally blame both.
Can’t we blame both? Because I totally blame both.
*****************
We can blame both.
I blame both.
Jesus, a kid has enough to cry about in a day without someone adding to it for their own enjoyment.
Maybe at midnight I’ll go next door and scare my elderly neighbor half to death and then take a picture of it.
You know, making “art”.
Nobody is really suffering pain, right?
Dumbasses.
So I guess I’m the only one who enjoys the suffering of children, huh?
If the parents OK’d it Greenberg did nothing unethical. I’d say the parents were acting dubiously, but I’m conservative on such things. I don’t put my kids’ photos up on Facebook, let alone pose in print ads, act in television commercials and star in horror movies. But if you want your kid manipulated for the purposes of “art,” with no major, lingering effects, no harm no foul.
Again, are YOU fucking kidding me too?
So…if the parents OK’d Greenberg raping their kids, then Greenberg could ethically rape them?
I think the kids’ parents know their kids better than we do. Presumably they thought it did no great harm, and in my opinion the harm’s more likely to be in putting your kid in commerical photography than making him give back a lollipop.
That’s not what you said. You’ve found a harm and called a foul.
Calling “harm” and “foul” on parenting techniques is sticky business. Aside from glaringly obvious cruel abuses, you never know what’s going to hurt a kid. If you think that putting children in commercial photography is harm, then this isn’t a particularly egregious example. If you think that there’s nothing wrong with putting your kid in commerical photos, then singling out this particular incident is ridiculous. In any case the photographer hasn’t done anything unethical, which is the claim of the original post.
I missed the exception for “glaringly obvious cruel abuses” in “If the parents OK’d it Greenberg did nothing unethical.”
I don’t think telling a kid to return a lollipop is a “glaringly obvious cruel abuse.” I was thinking more along the lines of child pornography, which we can all agree is unethical (to put it mildly) even if the parents signed off on it.
Good.
First of all, I can’t imagine wanting to photograph weeping children and secondly, why would anybody want to look at an exhibit of crying babies’ photos? Oh, I get it. It’s art. Well, by that standard, maybe this is, too, considering it’s the parent doing the photography:
http://newsone.com/2653866/kanealeen-latouche-virginia/
Yes, because taking a lollipop away from a child is the exact same thing as rape.
Children are powerless. And they feel that powerlessness quite keenly. When adults exploit that powerlessness for their own gain/enjoyment/art, it’s a problem. I found these photographs incredibly disturbing. And I’d like to see the parents explain this to their children 20 years from now. “Well, you see, we took you to a photographer, gave you a lollipop which we knew was really a lie because it was going to be taken away from you anyway, and when it was you were then photographed, naked from the waist up, screaming your head off so that your discomfort could be peddled in some coffee table book!” Fantastic.
“your” – for lack of an edit button.
The process is to email me and ask me to fix the comment, which I will. Sadly, I don’t control the WordPress software.
You get it, and it shouldn’t be hard. Why doesn’t everybody? Theories?
I would have no more made my son cry than cut off my own ear. Ever. So a photographer could get a shot? Really? What is wrong with people?
Theories?
Maybe most parents at some point or another have gotten the fleeting and dark joy of tantalizing their trusting children for a laugh and don’t want to recognize that small piece of cruelty in them. That complete and absolute power tends to tempt people into using for purely selfish reasons.
I donno.
Or instead of a “small piece of cruelty” perhaps something softer and more harmless that people are afraid might be confused for cruelty.
“Children are powerless. And they feel that powerlessness quite keenly. When adults exploit that powerlessness for their own gain/enjoyment/art, it’s a problem.”
Comment of the Day.
And then you could shut the coffee table book and take out the photo albums. “Here you are crying because we wouldn’t let you eat a tree. Here you are crying because you wanted the neighbor’s motorcyle. Here you are crying because daddy put a funny hat on you. Here you are crying at your second birthday party because everyone was singing. These things don’t seem so earthshattering now, of course, but when you were a baby, like all babies, you cried 30 times a day. And sometimes we took pictures, to capture and remember such moments, because they have a kind of innocent poignancy, and they’re actually happy memories, even though you were not having a splendid time at that particular moment.”
If you don’t see the difference between manufacturing pain to document it and documenting incidental and unintentional pain, then I don’t think you’ll understand the problem.
Especially when the manufactured pain came from a source that a child is innately born to trust *unconditionally*.
Terms like “manufacturing pain” are too glib to capture the great ambivalences of childrearing. A parent has to do things to upset the child’s well-being all the time – in order to maintain the child’s well-being. And nobody’s raised a toddler without laughing outright at something the child thinks is heartbreaking. The ordinary pains of being two aren’t like the pains of being waterboarded or raped. If a photographer wants to capture these ordinary pains, would it be more ethical to wait around until a baby found something to cry about?
My guess is that these photographs are meant to spark such conversations, which is interesting.
You can’t harm a child ethically to “spark controversies.” There is no controversy. You don’t use human beings as a means to an end, and those with power don’t manipulate the weak, young am dependent. I find the failure to grasp this principles, which are both basic and clearly implicated in this case, disturbing.
If the photographer made puppies anxious to get cute “terrified puppies” shots, she’d have to hire a bodyguard.
Really? Ever see what they do to get amazing shots in nature documentaries? Let alone feature films?
And I said “conversations,” not “controversies.” The ambivalence I’m talking about – in which children look beautiful even when they’re crying, in which the abject sadness of a toddler is both moving and ordinary if not even amusing – is presumably the point of the art, and it makes for interesting conversation. And the “harm” caused to the children involved is, I’d say, about the same level as someone telling me they find my failure to agree with their ethical analysis “disturbing.” That is, not much. I’ll get over it. Like I got over being two.
Yes, and those techniques in nature films are unethical. And I specified puppies.
Next rationalization!
Plenty of films about puppies, and other than a few PETA members one never hears a squawk, let alone anything requiring bodyguards. As you claimed if your hypothetical.
Of course, if you think that *any* child going through *any* discomfort while being filmed for commerical or artistic gain is unethical, then that’s a coherent position, if a radical one. Just curious that you’d pick this example. Rather than, say, Shirley Temple dancing under hot lights.
My hypothetical is true. People would flip out if they knew how those cute videos are produced in some cases.
You really should check the blog first before writing things like this, Gregg. I am on record here as believing that child performing should be banned, except under very, very restricting and supervised conditions. Margaret O’Brien (I wrote about this, too) said that Vincent Minnelli made her hysterical in the famous “snow people” scene in “Meet Me In St. Louis” by telling her that her new puppy was dead. And you will say, “but it was worth it, because the scene was great, and the film’s a classic,” right? SHE didn’t think so, and I don’t either. It’s child abuse “for art.”
Forgive me for not searching “Margaret O’Brien” on your blog. I would agree that telling a child her dog was dead in order to get a good performance is unethical. I would also say it’s not the same thing as taking away a lollipop from a toddler and snapping a picture. Unlike O’Brien, the children in Greenberg’s photographs won’t be haunted by this episode.
As for your hypothetical, your addition of “in some cases” is precisely my point. In some cases, discomfort for the purposes of art is unethical. In some cases it isn’t. If Greenberg asked the parents to cancel the kids’ nap, in the hopes they might just naturally throw a tantrum, would that be ethical? If the door slammed shut and the kid started crying, would it be ethical to take a photograph? When the next kid came, could you slam the door and see if you got lucky again? Can you startle a puppy for a funny Youtube video?
Sarcasm uncalled for, and unappreciated. You referenced my position on child performers, and I have posted on that many times. Before assuming my position, you can check it out. That”s what the search function is for.
So harming children and causing emotional trauma is only unethical if they are haunted by it, eh? That’s some standard. I’m pretty sure you could cut off a 2-year old’s pinky, get a great shot, and she wouldn’t remember a thing.
Awww, Jack, now with your talk of puppies, you’ve guilted me. I always preface walking my dog with looking at him directly while he is paying attention to me, then saying, “Wanna go for a walk?” He cocks his head, then erupts in flat-out hazardous-to-persons-and-property prancing and jumping, in excited anticipation. That head-cocking motion and expression is just so charming, I can’t get enough – makes me smile every time. So, sometimes, just because it makes me laugh every time, instead of asking the full question, I keep my lips together, and intone the last word in rising pitch, “mmmmMM??” He erupts the same as if I have asked the full question. He knows.
But I ALWAYS deliver on the promise, and walk him after making those sounds.
If I did that just to make him twitch and jump, and didn’t walk him, he’d eat me.
No sarcasm was meant. It’s true it did not occur to me to look for your other postings on child performers.
The example of cutting off a finger, as with waterboarding, rape and the manipulative lying to a child old enough to be permanently haunted by such a thing, is not at all similar to taking a lollipop away from a toddler. I came up with less hysterical examples – slamming a door, denying a nap, startling a puppy – but I understand it’s more fun to pretend that I’m cheering on child abusers. “Anything for art” is a ridiculous stance. So is “no discomfort whatsoever.”
This is the rationalization. Pinching is OK, hitting no. The causing 0f discomfort of any kind to a child for reasons that do not benefit the child is always wrong. Always. You added a “must be haunted” qualifier. No. It’s an absolute, and you’re just playing the “little lies/crimes/cruelties don’t count” game.
I offered being haunted as one reason – not the only reason – taking a lollipop from a toddler isn’t the same as telling a child her dog is dead. If we all remembered our toddler days we’d remember little else but suffering. People that age cry all the time, often over events no sensible person would qualify as abuse. If you wait to change a child’s diaper until you arrive home, rather than pulling to the side of the road to attend to an screaming infant, are you behaving unethically? That’s “the causing of discomfort of any kind for reasons that do not benefit the child,” and as far as level of harm it’s much closer to taking a lollipop away than the cutting off of a pinky.
Gregg, you are still equating incidental discomfort to inflicted pain. There is a SUBSTANTIVE difference.
Justifying inflicting discomfort or pain on a child as long as there is no lasting mental or physical trauma is an appalling standard that would open wide a door of abuses under the “hey they won’t remember” guise.
Only problem is, you don’t know that the child doesn’t remember. Everything that occurs to a child IS internalized to some degree, maybe not as a directly referable memory, but definitely as an impression of ‘how life is’.
We haven’t said “No discomfort whatsoever.” not once. We have determined that applied and proportionate discomfort that directly benefits the growth of a child in terms of socializing, virtues, discipline, etc IS acceptable.
Applying pain and discomfort, in this case betraying a child’s trust, to benefit the parents or a photographer is not acceptable.
Glib?
Hardly, I think that term was well thought out and not informal.
When you say “A parent has to do things to upset the child’s well-being all the time – in order to maintain the child’s well-being” I don’t think that’s a particularly accurate statement.
If you said “A parent has to do things that occasionally upset a child in order to promote disciplinary, social or virtuous growth” I may agree with you. But I don’t see “ALL THE TIME” or “upsetting their WELL-BEING” as necessary.
Plus you are equating “Parents doing temporarily undesirable thing X to promote good value Y in child” to “Parents doing temporarily undesirable thing X to benefit parents”. You still don’t see that distinction.
Children are completely and unconditionally trusting of their parents. For the parents to betray that is unthinkable. Equating that to discipline or any other such child-rearing doesn’t compute.
“If a photographer wants to capture these ordinary pains, would it be more ethical to wait around until a baby found something to cry about?”
Uh yeah. Because what is at issue is not taking photos of a child crying. What is at issue is the parents abuse of unconditional trust, abuse of power, taking advantage of the weak and dependent, and inflicting discomfort or pain without a reasonable need.
The definition of “reasonable need” is a worthwhile discussion. Everyone (save Jenny McCarthy) would agree that the discomfort of injection is worth the need of innoculation, and everyone (save child pornographers) would agree that the discomfort – to put it mildly – of rape is not worth the gain made by the pornographic industry. Other cases are far less clear-cut. As I’ve said, the act of raising a child is a near-constant balance between various needs and desires of parent and child. Any honest, involved parent would admit to such.
You’ve called the denial of finishing a lollipop a betrayal of trust and abuse and have compared it to waterboarding. I would respectfully disagree, and I think I have some company on this point. If we both called child welfare, and you said you were waterboarding your child and I said I was taking away a lollipop the better to have a photograph of a sad kid, one of us would prompt a much more serious investigation than the other.
Well, if you’d bother to read, you’ll note I didn’t compare the promise of a treat and it’s sudden confiscation to water boarding. I did imply that as a matter of scale (since I don’t think a lollipop would affect an adult the same) that water boarding could be used on an adult to take artistic images of misery as a hyperbole. So, not quite the comparison you accuse me of.
Of the other 6 times water boarding has been mentioned prior to this particular comment, you mentioned it 5 times and Lollywaffle once. So your entire second paragraph is sunk.
Your first paragraph is a solid expose that reviews what everyone here agrees to about raising a child and you pretend like it solidifies your “it’s ok to betray trust of children for personal benefit” stance. It does not solidify it at all, only avoids it so you can pretend like you’ve accomplished some sort of Q.E.D. You haven’t.
Any parent who’s ever said “That’s enough reading, it’s time for bed” while thinking of the spouse, movie or glass of wine awaiting downstairs knows that “it’s ok to betray trust of children for personal benefit” is not a clear-cut ethical moment. Happy parents are better parents. Making yourself happy sometimes means the kid doesn’t get everything he thinks he’s going to get.
Any parent who hasn’t established and explained beforehand what “enough” reading is, has already set themselves up o betray the unspoken expectations of NOT setting limits.
Your last two sentences are not in error, but like your other commentary here, they don’t bolster your argument.
A child who can’t count cannot be told the maximum number of books that can be read. Honestly, you’ve either forgotten what a two-year-old is like or you’ve had preternaturally mature toddlers.
Shift those goal posts. You’re gonna use a reading child as a supporting argument, then I debunk it with a way to manage a child reading, and you now flip it on me saying we aren’t talking about kids who can read?
Pathetic.
Children the age of Greenberg’s photographs are read *to.* They don’t read books themselves.
Ok, so again narrowing the time frame of children we’re discussing then establishing that and going back to your comment “Any parent who’s ever said “That’s enough reading, it’s time for bed” while thinking of the spouse, movie or glass of wine awaiting downstairs knows that “it’s ok to betray trust of children for personal benefit” is not a clear-cut ethical moment. Happy parents are better parents. Making yourself happy sometimes means the kid doesn’t get everything he thinks he’s going to get.” You are muddling the motivations now to attempt to make the intentional lollipop betrayal ok.
There is ample reason to cut off reading at a predetermined time (for all the reasons I’ve listed). I’d submit having non-selfish purposes for ending reading time, that are based on predetermined reasons, such as “a child can’t have everything they want” is wholly different from ending reading time because your simply tired of reading. Even if the effects on the child are apparently the same. But even then, you fail to equate this to the intentional betrayal of a child for the sake of inflicting discomfort, the discomfort being the source of personal fulfillment (in the case of these photos).
All your commentary once called out on the monstrous proposition has been to avoid taking ownership of that characteristic.
I don’t even like those pictures of babies dressed up like food. I think it’s creepy.
Totally agree on the food thing! It would be much harder to explain to your kid why you felt it was necessary to dress them up like a radish and put them on a greeting card.
I wanted to comment in line to Greg’s comment about waiting to change a diaper but the option was not there. (I’m 0 for 2 here).Greg, I have been that mom with the screaming toddler who was trying to avoid using his car seat as a toilet while we were both stuck in traffic. I was as powerless as he was in that moment. The point is, I didn’t purposely and willfully inflict his discomfort upon him for my own enjoyment or gain. Big difference.
(I’ve found that it often looks like you can’t reply to a specific posting, but if you reply to the posting directly above it ends up in the proper place. Weird.)
In my hypothetical, the diaper was already dirty but changing it at home rather than in the car was preferable. I’ve been that parent too, and sometimes I’ve taken a moment – to put perishables away, to end a phone conversation, or just to take a breath – before going and dealing with Toddler Melodrama #934. In other words, I’ve prolonged her discomfort “for reasons that do not benefit the child,” thus violating Jack’s rather extreme ethical rule. Is there a difference between prolonging, intentionally but not joyfully, a minor discomfort, and causing one? It’s a fair question. But I think every parent knows that parenting is murky. Sometimes you take a knife away so a kid won’t hurt themselves. Sometimes you snap a picture of a kid’s ridiculous tantrum to give your mother-in-law something to giggle about. And sometimes you refuse to read Pat The Bunny for the fourteenth time, just because you don’t feel like it. I’d put the Greenberg photos somewhere in this murk, rather than in the territory of, say, waterboarding.
Put your own mask on before helping someone else. I always thought that was sound advice.
Yes, I get what you are saying. We’ve both been through the “discomfort” of raising a toddler. Messy years, for sure! But I think I draw the line at using my children’s struggles (however minor and lollipop related they might be) for my own entertainment or, worse, someone else’s. Thanks for hearing me out.
I guess my feeling is that the parents in question must have genuinely believed in the art, however dubious that might seem. I may well be overgenerous in my assessment. In any case I’m grateful my kids are now old enough to look at these photographs for themselves. It’s prompted an interesting discussion and not a few gross pinky tricks!
Who cares if they really believed in the art? It’s irrelevant.
That’s just a subtle ends-justifies-the-means rationalization.
“Is there a difference between prolonging, intentionally but not joyfully, a minor discomfort, and causing one?”
YES. And your question clearly alludes to the difference. There is a difference between parents actively manufacturing a discomfort for the parent’s or someone else’s benefit and parent’s dealing with a situation that occurred out of their control. One betrays trust, the other one doesn’t.
“Sometimes you take a knife away so a kid won’t hurt themselves.”
Certainly not without attendant explanation for the child’s edification. Otherwise you come across as a capricious dictator.
“Sometimes you snap a picture of a kid’s ridiculous tantrum to give your mother-in-law something to giggle about.”
Another non-manufactured scenario. Although I don’t necessarily know if that is kosher either.
“And sometimes you refuse to read Pat The Bunny for the fourteenth time, just because you don’t feel like it.”
I’m not sure that fits the bill either for creating discomfort that doesn’t actually produce a benefit. Teaching a child they can’t have everything they demand is definitely a healthy lesson.
“I’d put the Greenberg photos somewhere in this murk”
Then you still fail to see the substantive difference between parents manufacturing pain and discomfort (in this case promising the child a very great joy, only to snatch it away in a complete because-we-can display of trust violation) for the sole benefit of others and parents who apply a proportionate and thoughtful amount of discomfort to grow a child towards maturity.
If you snap a picture of a kid’s tantrum, you may in fact have caused said tantrum. You may have caused it by taking a knife away. Or by refusing to read a book for the fourteenth time. Which is to say, you may have manufactured such pain and discomfort. Perhaps for a good, clear reason. Perhaps for a less clear reason. In the way that it is less clear that the Greenberg photographs are a complete betrayal of trust for the sole benefit of others. Perhaps they teach that you can’t always have what you desire because other people’s desires supersede. Of course, such a lesson would require “attendant explanation.” But anyone who’s raised a kid knows that the “attendant explanation” delivered to a toddler mid-tantrum might as well be a reading of Ulysses, for all its heard and appreciated.
“…you may in fact have caused said tantrum. You may have caused it by taking a knife away. Or by refusing to read a book for the fourteenth time. Which is to say, you may have manufactured such pain and discomfort. Perhaps for a good, clear reason.”
And no one has said that the application of proportional and thoughtful discomfort to promote the health growth of a child towards maturity is bad, in fact I feel like a parrot that I have said it so much. Just like your other reply to me moments ago on a separate thread, you are re-hashing something no one has denied and pretending it crowns your entire argument. It doesn’t.
“Perhaps they teach that you can’t always have what you desire because other people’s desires supersede.”
What? I don’t teach my children, I don’t know very many effective parents either, that they don’t get everything they want by giving them what they want and then summarily taking it away. That is ludicrous. You know how effective parents teach it? By telling their child *before*, that they don’t need such-and-such a treat, and THEN *not* letting them have it. You have a weird system of teaching values that somehow involves betrayal of trust and breaking of promises.
“Of course, such a lesson would require “attendant explanation.””
Yup, before-hand is the preference. Afterwards ONLY if conditions do not allow (and by the way, conditions that don’t involve intentionally betraying trust or intentionally breaking promises).
“But anyone who’s raised a kid knows that the “attendant explanation” delivered to a toddler mid-tantrum might as well be a reading of Ulysses, for all its heard and appreciated.”
Duh, that’s why explanations ought to be given before hand in all situations that permit it. Oh, by the way, telling a child “I’m going to give you this lolly pop, and then take it away, so this nice lady can take pictures of you crying” doesn’t teach a damned thing, likely a child will give you a confused look, like any person wondering why a heretofore reliable authority would make such an illogical assertion. No lesson is attached to that by the way, unless you like teaching the lesson of “dad’s an asshole”.
If you give a two-year-old a lollipop they will cry. They will cry when they are no longer tasting the lollipop. They will cry if they have finished it. They will cry if you take it away. They will cry if they drop it. They will cry if while licking it they poke their cheek. From a toddler’s point of view, every pleasure is a promise of everlasting pleasure, which is why they are heartbroken thirty times a day. There is no explanation beforehand that they will retain. There is no explanation afterward they will understand. If by some chance they finish the lollipop without crying, they will cry when they crash from all that sugar. It is arguable that it is cruel to give a two-year-old a lollipop, because it leads to inevitable sadness.
Somewhere, during this constant melodrama of being two, the parent must fulfill their own needs and desires. If their own needs and desires require bonafide abuse of a child, there is an obvious ethical problem. Taking a lollipop away is not a bonafide abuse of a child.
Ok, this will be my last response on this thread. You’re playing games with being willfully obtuse at this point.
You continue to equate incidental sadness as well as proportionally applied discomfort for a healthy growth purpose with intentionally manufactured discomfort as a way to rationalize intentionally making and breaking promises for your own selfish purposes.
Your latest list of incidental causes of sadness also do not equate to the topic at hand.
Your final paragraph is a loose attempt to justify the fulfilling the healthy needs of the parent (social, physical, mental). Which I have no problem with. However, in the context of this conversation, in order to continue defending your stance, you must list betraying a child for a photographer as, I guess, a social or a mental need?
You are abhorrent.
Correction, not you, but that idea is abhorrent.
I’d say that someone who has those beliefs is abhorrent to me.
Indeed. I’m trying to get away from internet accusations on people and more on their beliefs and actions. The readers can make the connection to their characters that I’m not openly stating.
(excepting of course when I call someone an idiot)
I’ve found that whether I call a belief “X” or the person “X (for having the belief)”, I’m attacked as if I called the person “X (for no reason at all).”
Good luck though.
Yeah, it may not last long though.
But it helps in trying to change people’s minds if they don’t feel like their pride is being directly attacked. Although professionals shouldn’t ever assume that.
(I’ve found that it often looks like you can’t reply to a specific posting, but if you reply to the posting directly above it ends up in the proper place. Weird.)
There’s a maximum thread depth. We generally just reply at the deepest level we can, or, when it gets convoluted, reply with a one liner about starting a new thread to reply.
The photographer could easily walk around malls and public places and take pictures of children crying, but she chose to provoke children to tears to get those shots.
“These things don’t seem so earthshattering now, of course, but when you were a baby, like all babies, you cried 30 times a day. And sometimes we took pictures, to capture and remember such moments, because they have a kind of innocent poignancy, and they’re actually happy memories, even though you were not having a splendid time at that particular moment.”
You didn’t cause the crying , though, did you? Crying due to naturally occurring circumstances and deliberately provoking tears for those photographs are an entirely different thing. We all had an uncle or someone who teased or tickled kids till they cried…what’s different about this photo shoot?
Personally I find the ethics of a photographer wandering around malls and public places taking photographs of crying children far more dubious than taking a lollipop away.
The first is a breach of privacy, fairness and autonomy. The latter is an abuse of power, and a violation of the Categorical Imperative. Ethically speaking, apples and oranges.
The first is a breach of privacy, fairness and autonomy. The latter is an abuse of power, and a violation of the Categorical Imperative. Ethically speaking, apples and oranges.
If you take a lollipop away from your kid because you’ve decided that’s enough sugar for one day, is that an abuse of power? If Greenberg said, “take the lollipop away when you think your kid’s had enough sugar, and I’ll take a photograph of the reaction,” is that more ethical? As a parent, when you say, “That’s enough sugar/TV/readings of Pat the Bunny,” can you always differentiate between the child’s welfare and your own desire for peace and quiet? If you take a lollipop away from a kid who never would have had a lollipop that afternoon, are you causing discomfort? Or have you doled out extra pleasure and then withdrawn it because enough’s enough? I think these are the types of questions any ethical parent asks themselves, but pretending there’s a clear-cut answer ignores the ambivalence and murk that’s at the heart of parenting.
Why did you let your kid have the lollipop to begin with?
*ding ding*
If he got one of his own accord, I’d submit that the lesson to be taught is “ask permission before getting candy” (a fairly simple and useful lesson for a child) not “you’ve had too much sugar” (a rather complex lesson as apparently you think a kid might be able to ration his/her own sugar intake).
The rest of your paragraph is a whole lot of avoiding the core of the issue while pretending like this is what you’ve been discussing the whole time.
Quit. We’ve already determined that there are times to apply measured discomfort for the healthy growth of a child, it must be purposeful, and it should be explained. You are pretending like those scenarios fit neatly up against the intentional manufacture of a scenario in which a parent makes a promise to a child, fulfills the promise (to the joy of the child) and then reneges on that promise to inflict pain. The pain was inflicted only for the purpose of pain. You keep pretending like that little premise doesn’t exist.
At this point I think you are being willfully obtuse because you don’t want to admit you are rationalizing a pretty mean and unwholesome act.
You are clearly imagining a child of a different age – closer to the age of Margaret O’Brien as cited – which is a whole different scenario. The children in these photographs could not get a lollipop of their own accord, nor understand notions of asking permission or sugar intake. The entire notion of “promise” to a toddler is one they invent – I love cuddling with daddy, so I should get to do it all night – rather than one that can be explained.
I would agree that when one person in a discussion thinks the other one is being willfully obtuse to avoid agreeing with them, the conversation ought to be quit. Have a good night.
Ok, we can stick to a more narrow range of children’s ages. But doing so puts you back to square one with the “the toddler doesn’t know they are being misused/cheated/betrayed for the parents personal benefit, so it’s ok” argument.
Which Jack has undermined here and here
If you take a lollipop away from your kid because you’ve decided that’s enough sugar for one day, is that an abuse of power?
No.
If Greenberg said, “take the lollipop away when you think your kid’s had enough sugar, and I’ll take a photograph of the reaction,” is that more ethical?
No, because you still set it up before hand, and set it up specifically to cause pain.
My God. I’m getting a Dakota Fanning flashback from reading that column of your’s, Jack. I’ve heard those excuses for child exploitation before. At least, in this case, it wasn’t in an attempt to justify child porn! But it’s certainly indicative of the mentality of some who view pre-adolescent children as casual tools of their trade. Someone tell these creatures- AND those idiot parents- that children deserve love, concern and moral guidance… not cheap exploitation to put an illicit buck in their elders’ pockets.
I thought this ethics case was a relatively simple one. But, I’ll confess, I did not think that right away. But at some point while reading the long argument between texagg04 and Gregg, it finally dawned on me: a Bible verse, or couple of verses, that I had learned back when my kids were under our roof. Something like, “Don’t provoke your children to wrath, or else you will embitter them…” and I think it goes on to link that embittering effect with the further consequence of abortion (can I call it that?) of a child’s faith in anything, let alone faith in God. Now, as a grandparent, I guess I’d better go back and re-read, and refresh, lest I someday ask my grandson to fetch a baseball for me, and upon receiving it from him, drop it on top of his head to put his pain on video.
People really do need to be able to trust, and to have trustworthy objects of trust. Raising a child in a way that honors those truisms seems to me to be a most excellent way for a child to learn to be trustworthy himself. Teaching a child to trust no one but himself seems to me to be a gateway poison, a mal-nourishing, along a path to learned narcissism.
Well spoken.
PS Steven if I haven’t said it already, it is GREAT to see you commenting!
It WAS well spoken. What a shame it has been for our generation, Eeyoure, that we came to such basic realizations so late in life. Because of it, our children and grandchildren have suffered as they never should have. It’s also led to the terrible degradations of the very institutions that once were bastions of the concepts of character and citizenship TO children. These things might well cost us all- in every generation- our prosperity, our heritage, our freedom and our country. It’s also given us amoral lunatics like Jill Greenberg, among a host of others. We have a lot of work ahead to make amends. And thanks for the greeting! I’vbe had to put a lot on hold this summer.
Sorry, I wasn’t advocating creepy behavior. What I was thinking was more ‘photographing real life’ rather than purposely setting kids up to cry for a photo. I’d forgotten how much things have changed in the US regarding taking pictures in public. I’m sorry about that.
““…you may in fact have caused said tantrum. You may have caused it by taking a knife away. Or by refusing to read a book for the fourteenth time. ”
But not for fame and monetary reward! Not for exhibition and/or sale to the general public.
Yup