Declarations

There are various interesting social issues arising from Facebook (the awkwardly public breakup via Relationship Status changes is often referenced). One I haven't seen addressed before comes in a post on Feministe about how best to react when the birth mother of your child posts a picture of said child on her page.

It's another demonstration of the way that the complexities of human connections become evident in different ways when we can make public statements about who we know and our relationships with them.

I mean, if you give birth to a child and know where it is and keep track of its growing up, you're bound to feel some connection, but it's probably fairly private. It's real, it's complicated, but it's mostly known to you, your close friends, family, the adoptive parents of the child.

If you can make these statements to the general world--look, here's a child I gave birth to and feel a connection with even though I'm not raising her!--that's another thing.

Not, I think, necessarily a bad thing, but a new one, at least on this scale. I've come across the idea that the web makes social life more like it was in small towns in the old days, where anyone who cares can know all about you.

There are positive and negative sides to this, as to anything, but it's an interesting thought.