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When I started reading this piece about why you shouldn’t put photos of yourself with your kid all over your Facebook profile I was surprised. Basically it comes down to this: “Future employer X calls colleague Y to ask about me; colleague Y checks Facebook to get the latest….and instead of a link to a story I’m proud of, or even a video I find funny, he finds a photo of me and my baby boy making snuggly faces.”
Ooooooooooooh.
Within hours after the birth of my son, I posted a photo of his smushy newborn face on Facebook.And then I started to worry that I had made a mistake.
Not about the baby – he’s awesome. Not even about my baby’s potentially compromised privacy, or the possible ruination of his future digital identity. Instead, I worried that, by publicly donning my mom-hat, I might be hurting myself.
Studies upon studies show that women with children fare worse, professionally and financially, than women without. Moms face more difficulty getting hired and earn less than their childless peers. It’s worse for new, breastfeeding moms, who are judged to be less competent and less likely to be hired than bottle-feeding moms and who suffer more severe and prolonged earnings loss. Even controlling for all the extenuating circumstances that make salary comparisons really hard, the evidence seems pretty conclusive: Moms earn less, and have less success, than women without children.
Of course, my reaction after reading the above was “Well, my page is private… so I’m fine.” But then I read these two lines:
How can I safely use the internet to update my family members about our kid?
What's the best way to digitally share news about your kid with family members? We have a few privacy concerns (primarily about keeping our work... Read more
“And while my Facebook page is private, my friends do include plenty of people I’ve worked with or for, or might hope to work with or for in the future. I also take it as given that any potential future employer or reference would use all the available tools to check me out – including finding out who we know in common via social networks.”
I realized they TOTALLY apply to me. Right now both my jobs are awesome, and neither Ariel nor my photography clients care that my kid is on my page (that I know of). But what if in the future I’m interested in doing something else and this works against me?
What do you guys think?
Updated to clarify: The topic of this article is totally NOT one that I support, but I do feel like the possibility of being discriminated against for sharing your kid’s lives on social networking websites is worth discussing. You can’t change a practice like this if you don’t know about it! — Stephanie
Very simple for me. I have no facebook account and don’t plan on it.
Perhaps someone can answer this question. I feel very strongly about not putting photos of children online until they are old enough to consent. However, a lot of people here are arguing that posting photos on Facebook is a way to share these moments with family and friends. Is there something about Facebook that makes this easier/better than email? Skype? Why use this very public medium for these photos, instead of something where the information can get directly to the family and friends you want to see it and no one else?
Not saying that anyone should have to hide their motherhood from employers, nor am I trying to be judgmental. I’m just honestly curious!
Exactly how I feel!
The interface for high-bandwidth things like photos and video is better on Facebook. If I email a video, my relatives with low bandwidth connections or low storage capacity email or computers will have difficulty viewing them. Facebook’s compression algorithms make it easier for them to see it.
My husband actually felt strongly enough about not putting photos of our daughter on Facebook that he set up a password-protected website. He spent probably over 50 hours setting it up–finding a gallery program that more or less did what we wanted it to do, getting the blog and gallery to more or less work together, figuring out the multi-step process needed to upload. We’ve both spent hours more answering tech support questions from older relatives who don’t understand how the website works and how to view photos. It takes most of an evening (with interruptions from the baby, of course) to upload the latest group of photos (phone/camera to computer, computer to server, server to gallery). And no one ever leaves comments.
In contrast, uploading a video to facebook takes about ten seconds from my phone, and I can immediately see that my parents have watched it because they clicked “like”.
The fact that potential employers use social media to find out information on employees disgusts me. It’s like asking to sit in on a girl’s night with my friends while we discuss what’s going on in our lives. What I do on a silly frivolous site like Facebook–unless I’m badmouthing their company etc–is NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS. Especially when it comes to my family life. If they’re not allowed to ask me about kids etc. in the interview, why do they get to see my FB photos etc?
The path that we’re on where we need to be so afraid of employers is a scary one, especially since some employers are now asking people for their FB passwords so they can go and check out their profiles. Or their W2s so they can verify past salaries (which has SSNs and other info on it). Or their EMAIL passwords! This is HAPPENING!! Sorry for all the caps but damn this pisses me off.
As for me, I’m on FB under another name (my stage name) and try to keep everything as locked down as possible. I know it’s not the best answer, but in this f’ed up new world I refuse to be bullied this way. Grrr…
Holy crap, they want your personal PASSWORDS?! I’d never be comfortable with that, and refuse to work for anybody who demands I give them access. Wow.
You basically took the words right out of my mouth. I DESPISE the job game, and I especially despise the thought that some employer will judge me based on what I do on my own time. I recently read an article about not doing certain “extreme” activities or sports and posting photos. It all just promotes bland conformity, an unhealthy work-life balance, lack of creativity, and paranoia. Uuuuuggggggghhh the work world just blows and I can’t even think straight now. I think I’d lose it if some employer asked for my personal passwords.
In my industry (architecture), a lot of architects don’t have kids. You’re first and only love is architecture, it’s ingrained in you from day 1. I’ve been lucky. I’ve aligned myself with architects who believe in balance in life and who have kids themselves. We are building a firm together, and I have every opportunity available to me now.
The reality is though that I know that a lot of architecture firms would not hire me, or would never advance me if they knew I had kids. And honestly, I’m ok with that. I don’t want to work for people who’s values are so different from my own.
If an employer doesn’t hire you because you have children, isn’t that illegal? (At least in the US.) If you even think that’s happened, can’t you sue? Why would an employer want to expose themselves to that risk?
It is illegal, but it can be very difficult to prove since an employer just has to have one valid reason for not hiring (or firing) you. Plus, it’s not unheard of for industries or local employers to brand someone who brings a suit as a troublemaker and blacklist her. For a lot of people, it’ just easier to ignore it and try to interview with someone else.
It is illegal, but unless something absurdly blatant happens, there isn’t much you can do about it.
When 200 people apply for each job opening, it’s really easy to talk about “a good fit” and really hard to prove discrimination. Additionally, in an industry where everyone knows everyone else, suing somebody for not hiring you is career suicide. No one will ever interview you again, because they don’t want to be sued.
As others have said, illegal and common sadly aren’t mutually exclusive.
At my last job (I’ve since gone freelance), I lost count of the number of times we were discussing a job candidate and had to remind my boss “you can’t say that” or “you can’t ask him that.”
We actually didn’t interview any women for the position (don’t get me started), but I distinctly remember one of the “good fit” discussions involving the fact that the candidate had kids, and how that could impact his willingness to work the insane hours we wanted.
Striking out on my own has been hard, but at least I don’t have to deal with THAT crap anymore.
I have a Facebook page (private) for my personal matters and a LinkedIn account for professional ones. I agree that even though it’s private a potential employer could end up finding out things about me through facebook, but if they go through all that trouble when they can learn about my professional side on my LinkedIn profile, well, good for them. I do have a life and as they can see from my privacy settings I keep it separate from my job. And that’s why I’m so awesome at doing what I do, because I can have great reviews from colleagues yet keep a normal social life.
I’m so glad that I don’t have to deal with some of these situations! I have two main jobs (preschool teacher and nursery worker), and I already had some of the coworkers/bosses on Facebook. After I started working, I added everybody else! Since both jobs revolve around children and I knew most of these people outside of work, it wasn’t a big deal. In fact, both jobs have their own FB pages and lots of important info is shared there.
I suppose that if I was ever looking for a different job I could always deactivate my account for a while. I really don’t anticipate having any issues, though 🙂
I am fully in the camp that says, “If they don’t like me as a mother, then it’s probably not a good fit” and that “it hurts women across the board to hide motherhood” but I do understand when people have to compromise temporarily to feed their family. I also don’t advise flaunting your motherhood in an interview. There’s a huge difference in not hiding and overstating in an interview.
One thing I think everyone should think about is not whether to put pics of kids up, but what kinds of photos and stories are you sharing? Are you posting more when your kid is sick (or you are for that matter) or are you sharing photos/stories that show you have an outgoing personality, are reliable and other qualities that make you a great candidate? Because if you repeatedly post “my child has a cold, woe is us” that will stick with people reading your feed. I don’t mean, make your facebook a resume, but look at it with those eyes from time to time. (You might even find, for non-career purposes, that you are appearing more negative than you want or over-sharing some other behavior/quality that you don’t feel accurately reflects you.)
I’ve worked in HR and heard the stereotypes touted as fact. But there are also people who know an organized mother can be more effective and conscious of deadlines than non parents in some cases.
This is probably something for which there isn’t a general rule that applies to everybody, in my opinion. Good luck!
Stacy, I love this:
“One thing I think everyone should think about is not whether to put pics of kids up, but what kinds of photos and stories are you sharing? Are you posting more when your kid is sick (or you are for that matter) or are you sharing photos/stories that show you have an outgoing personality, are reliable and other qualities that make you a great candidate? Because if you repeatedly post “my child has a cold, woe is us” that will stick with people reading your feed. I don’t mean, make your facebook a resume, but look at it with those eyes from time to time. (You might even find, for non-career purposes, that you are being more negative or some other quality that you don’t feel accurately reflects you.)”
Definitely something to think about!
That makes a world of sense. Some of the parents in my life (no disrespect) overpost about their nuggets, and I can see how employers would translate that into stealing time from the company. Having said that, a single/childfree person who posts instagrams of everything elicits the same reaction from my inner boss. Bottom line, it’s a world of illegal to *not* hire you cause you’re a parent…
Do most people use Facebook as a reflection of their work-life, their home-life, or both? For me, since I got my Facebook account it was clearly never going to be about my work life. My partner and I live in a separate country from our families (who in fact live in separate countries from each other), so we post photos of us and our home life on their for friends and family ‘back home’ to see.
Being a parent shouldn’t be a liability on the job market, but disgustingly enough it is, and even worse it is for mothers more than fathers. Perhaps that is because mothers would take maternity leave if they got pregnant again/wanted to become mothers and a replacement would need to be found to do their work while on leave. Perhaps it’s because mothers may be more likely to take children to Dr’s appointments or stay home with sick kids. Maybe it’s because the world, especially the business world, is patriarchal and the men in power have completely forgotten that in order to be here, doing our ‘important’ jobs, it took a Mum and Dad.
That being said, you can lock down your Facebook account so that only people you are friends with can see your profile (other than your cover photo, profile pic, and I think ‘info’). I personally am not interested in any old person being able to access what I post for friends and family, so if a potential employer were to go to my Facebook page they wouldn’t see much at all.
Since when did private lives correlate so strongly with our ability to do a job well anyway? Everyone has something in their life that could affect their job – smokers taking cigarette breaks, those with stomach problems needing to go the bathroom more often, people with diabetes potentially needing to take insulin at work….
I’m currently a stay at home mom. I’m not actively looking for work, but occasionally I will put in an application if something catches my eye. I use Facebook all the time. I used to think about every little thing that I posted, but then I decided if a company wouldn’t hire me based on my Facebook profile, it probably isn’t a company that I would be happy working for. So my Facebook is covered with family, education, and political posts. And I live content with my choices.
I am a dedicated working professional in academia and technology and also a new mom. This article really struck a cord with me. Over the past few days I have made some changes. I only had a few work contacts friended on my Facebook list (people I consider friends but still felt somewhat uncomfortable sharing stuff). I decided to create a new profile for professional networking only, with my work email address. I’ve friended all kinds of people at work that I would have NEVER considered friending on my personal profile. I am keeping it kid-free and work appropriate in content. It’s working great! I am going block all of these contacts from my personal profile so they won’t know it exists and keep it on lock down in regard to privacy. Mua hahaha! I will have the best of both worlds.
I am also angered about the discrimination and double standards but it is what it is. Sadly, until the family friendly Generation X takes control from the Baby Boomers we have to play the game. You ladies know the score. Times are a changin’ though and eventually we won’t have to put up with this!