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I am pro-choice, but I have never bought the argument that life doesn’t begin at conception, that it’s just a clump of cells and has no right to consideration. I prefer to think of the question as a conflict between two competing dreams of which only one can be the victor; although I side with the mother’s dream I see gray in this decision that so many paint in black and white.The crux of Tate’s position espouses this same conflict; the rights of individual ownership over a shared experience. A few hours ago, immediately after reading this question, then her story, then her arguments, I would have said that some mistakes were made but for the most part I thought she was right. Now, I just think that she’s right.As I see it, there are really two questions here, two foci of contention. The first is whether Tate has a right, in the context of her daughter’s expressed objection, to continue to press to write about her at all. The second is whether she had the right to do so when her children were too young to give an opinion or express consent. The consent issue is more straightforward, so I’ll take aim at that first.I’d like to be clear that although this question asks for my opinion on Tate’s claim, I want to separate the question of choices I would make from the question of choices that I could make; this distinction is the driving force of my shift away from my original position that perhaps she had made some mistakes. Like any pro-choice person who might never choose to have an abortion themselves, my answer needs to be not about my own personal choices, but about the range that is acceptable within our society, and I want this framing because I want you, readers, to look at it through the same lens. It’s easy to summon quick outrage in sympathy with her daughter’s upset, but in the absence of the expressed objection, would her actions in using details and images of her daughter’s life as a toddler and a pre-schooler have been outside the norm? I claim the answer is no.I have kids, and consequently I am a long-time peruser of a variety of one of the richest internet resources for kids’ arts and crafts, which is blogs. Quite frequently these blogs are lifestyle blogs, and names, ages, and small snippets about the family’s children are contained therein. I also come to these blogs via the internet recipe search route, and while details of the children’s lives are more often absent here unless the meal preparation was a joint activity with them, it’s reasonably common to see the home page with a nice family photo of the parents and all the kids.In fact, there is an entire blog (probably more than one) devoted to content exactly like that which Tate claims to have produced: thoughtful essays about parenting that may illustrate or support the writing using details or anecdotes about the kids.[1] Sometimes those essays have names and ages,[2] sometimes they don’t but contain far more details about a child’s actions.[3] I have seen links to articles from that blog here on Quora, and the questions I have seen on these links have never been about whether or not the author violated their kids’ privacy by telling these details of their preschoolers’ lives without their consent. I have seen authors here on Quora give details or stories about their kids in this fashion while answering questions, and the comment sections are never full of the readers’ reservations that the author gave specifics about their child.The point made by the above observations is that this type of content, content that references specifics of a child’s life before they are of age to even consent to their representation, sometimes with names and ages, is everywhere, and outrage about the violation of privacy of those too young to consent is not. Yes, there is occasional discussion about where the limits should be, as Tate notes herself, but in general it is accepted as within the norm.Hopefully, I have made this point well enough that you are now thinking about times in the past when you may have seen similar content and accepted it without a second thought, questions about whether or not the children were old enough to consent to use of their stories never having crossed your mind. Possibly, you may be thinking about the question of the value of that content. I certainly find it valuable, in ways that have benefited not only myself, but also my children. And judging by some of the comments that do appear on those blog articles and Quora answers — you know, the comments that aren’t about the author’s crime against the privacy of their children — many others find value in it too.Possibly you don’t find anything worthy in it, but rhetorically assuming that you do, or at least that you accept the argument that others do, perhaps you are now considering whether such compositions could be written to have the same impact and resonance in the absence of those stories. Anecdotally, I can tell you from my own experience here on Quora that I believe the answer to that question is no. In one of my recently written and most-upvoted-ever answers here,[4] I opened with what was functionally a tacit admission that my own 15-year old son struggles with chores and is routinely criticized for not making his family contribution. I don’t fool myself that that answer was such a high level above the rest of my content that it would have been so popular without that attention-grabbing first line.Maybe, you might not have gone in that direction of questioning whether that presentation is really necessary for the value of the content. Maybe you found that easy to accept because you think the real issue is about how much is OK. “Oh,” you might be thinking, “that answer where you talked about your son in the first line is alright, you didn’t really give anything away that’s so unique to him, and it was only the one sentence anyway.” One of the reasons that I have never liked the “it’s not really alive right after conception” argument for choice is that the question that immediately follows is “Well, then when is it really alive?” Despite the fact that there is an entire branch of mathematics built on the foundational concept that if you make a bunch of connected pieces tiny enough eventually they become one continuous thing and not a collection of separate things, this process doesn’t go well in reverse. Looking at a continuous spectrum and picking out a discrete point to be the bright, shining line of division where everything on one side is OK and everything on the other isn’t — that’s hard, and the answer is almost always one that everyone agrees is a compromise, a judgment call. So before you get too far down that path of “but”: but it’s OK if it’s not too much, but it’s OK if they don’t use the images, but it’s OK if they don’t use the real names, I’m just going to highlight what I view to be the extreme end of this spectrum that our culture considers acceptable. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jon & Kate Plus 8, 19 Kids and Counting, and The Real Housewives of <insert locale here>.I have never watched these shows, nor paid more than passing attention to them as a cultural phenomenon, but in an (admittedly brief) stint of internet research, I don’t find any controversy over the parents’ right to place their children on these shows, to make them part of the focus of the shows, to intrude on their privacy. I found expressions of concern, but they were about working conditions, child labor laws, behavioral problems of the lifestyle and whether proper consideration is being taken for the child’s welfare.[5] [6] They were not about whether these shows should maybe not exist at all because they violated the children’s rights to privacy.For the Duggar family, I found criticism of their religious views, of their political views, and of their lifestyle, but the only criticism I found relating to anything that “maybe shouldn’t be aired to the public” was when they shared photos of their miscarried baby.[7] In light of the outrage expressed in the comments of Ms. Tate’s article I find this ironic. The veil of culturally acceptable privacy was pierced by photos of their dead child, when the dead are commonly considered not to have any rights of privacy to violate, but not one squeak about how nobody had asked the 3 children born during the tenure of the show if they wanted to participate and whether or not the parents had been presumptuous in simply adding them in.Of course, the fact that I did not find those discussions does not mean they are not occurring, or that they are not there to find. But I think the lack of prominence does mean that a parents’ right to make decisions about high level public access to details of their children’s private lives is not only a legal perspective, but a normative one. Maybe that won’t always be true. Maybe it will change. I’ve written elsewhere, many times, that just because something is legal or common doesn’t make it right. But before any change can happen I want to see conversation, not castigation. Consideration, not knee-jerk reaction. Evaluation of the pros and cons of all the parties with a stake, not just a confirmation-bias position taken with 20–20 hindsight.For myself, personally, I recognize that the slippery slope argument I gave above is a logical fallacy. Saying that it’s hard to know where to put the line is not a sufficient justification for not having one, nor is it even the case that one does not already exist here; there are laws about use of one’s own child’s images in the context of child pornography etc. Nonetheless, I feel that the value equation is sufficiently complex that I don’t believe the greatest benefit comes from an external mandate. I’ll note that my position that Ms. Tate should retain the right to make choices is not the same as saying that I don’t think she should have to answer for the choices she makes. It’s just that it’s not us that I think she should have to answer to, any more than I think that a woman who chooses to abort a baby should have to justify her decision to the public. And I concede that it’s possible I would feel differently about that, were it not that I so strongly agree with the other perspective of her position, that she has an ownership stake in this shared experience and that gives her rights too.My grandfather’s camera was everywhere, and I hated it. He was no respecter of whether or not you had a fork halfway into your asymmetrically opened mouth when the shutter went off, and I was an unpopular tween with self-esteem issues who couldn’t understand why I was so socially inept. The last thing I needed was six million bad pictures of myself. I eventually came to an agreement with my parents that I would allow my picture to be taken and stop hiding from the camera, if I were allowed to take possession of both the photograph and the negative of any picture I disliked. But should my desire to control those permanent recordings of myself have had primacy over my family’s desire to have permanent reminders of family gatherings, ones that would have failed to represent the family experience had I been universally absent from them? Have they no vested interest?While you are thinking about that, I’ll note that on a routine basis parents grant the interest of others in a shared environment under circumstances where the level of investment in a particular child is much less: I refer to the media release so common in waiver forms for children’s activities. Here is an example, from Part A of the medical form of the Boy Scouts of America that must be filled out by the parent for any child attending any camp or overnight scouting activity where their parent will not be present:I also hereby assign and grant to the local council and the Boy Scouts of America, as well as their authorized representatives, the right and permission to use and publish the photographs/film/videotapes/electronic representations and/or sound recordings made of me or my child at all Scouting activities, and I hereby release the Boy Scouts of America, the local council, the activity coordinators, and all employees, volunteers, related parties, or other organizations associated with the activity from any and all liability from such use and publication. I further authorize the reproduction, sale, copyright, exhibit, broadcast, electronic storage, and/or distribution of said photographs/film/videotapes/electronic representations and/or sound recordings without limitation at the discretion of the BSA, and I specifically waive any right to any compensation I may have for any of the foregoing.[8]Have you ever checked a box like this, giving permission for images and recordings of your child to be used? Did you do a serious assessment of the pros and cons? Did you ask your child first? If you did, were they of an age where their consent was in any way meaningful?I spend a week every summer volunteering at a Cub Scout camp in an administrative role, and I handle these forms. I can tell you that my experience is that very, very few parents withhold this permission. I suspect strongly that for most parents, the thought process is something like: “Well, of course it’s reasonable to expect that this organization will take pictures etc. for a variety of reasons including advertising, and of course it would be extremely difficult for them to single out my kid and make sure he isn’t in any photos when they’re just getting candid shots of a group while the kids are doing their stuff, and really, what’s the harm?” There is a casual assumption that in a group activity, where it’s reasonable to take pictures or video of the group, it’s reasonable to grant permission to other invested parties to have control of those images. That is not a legal assumption, or the waiver would not be required. But it is the way that average people behave.My husband is sensitive to me telling other people (friends, etc.) stories about him that he perceives to portray him in a less than positive light. We don’t always agree about which stories these are; I’ve occasionally relayed something about a shared experience that I thought was fine in a group dinner with friends and had him tell me later that he was upset that I had shared that. Does he have the right to tell me that I am not allowed to discuss anything he does with other people, in order to guarantee that no mistakes are made? Forget the mistakes, does he even have the right to tell me that I can’t say anything about him to others, even if I am as much a part of the story as he is, unless he has approved it in advance? Let’s imagine that I came here on Quora and asked that question: “My husband won’t allow me to talk about him to others unless he approves what I have to say in advance, what should I do?” I’m willing to bet that after I waded through the ocean of responses telling me I was trolling because nobody could be so stupid as to not know that the right answer is to leave him, I would find some very helpful answers explaining to me that this was controlling and unhealthy behavior on the part of my spouse, and that I should consider leaving him or at a minimum seek counseling. I doubt that I would find any answers upholding his sole right to determine the use of our shared experience.Another answer here suggests that we should flip the tables; consider how we would feel about the child sharing their experience without the parents’ permission. Alright. I’ll go there. In an elementary-school assignment to tell which room in the house was their favorite and give five reasons why, one of my children wrote that one of the reasons he chose this room was that when Mom and Dad are arguing you can’t hear it in there. As you may imagine, I had an uncomfortable moment envisioning what the teacher would think as she read that. But should I have made him change his response? I can see the headlines now: “Parent forces child to rewrite schoolwork to conceal evidence of family dysfunction.”In each of those examples, it’s wrong for one party to have total control of the joint narrative, and Tate is not saying differently; she does not propose that her control at this point in time should be total. Of her daughter’s rights she notes:Certainly, my daughter is old enough now that I owe her a head’s up and a veto right on the pictures or on portions of the content … Amputating parts of my experience feels as abusive to our relationship as writing about her without any consideration for her feelings and privacy.There it is, clear as day, she feels that writing about her daughter without any consideration for her daughter’s perspective is abusive. That doesn’t appear to me as callous disregard for her daughter’s part-ownership of their mutual experiences. But note also a key point; her daughter’s right to consent is related to her age. Not a specific age, but it doesn’t need to be; this is about development and maturity. Maturity is always a key component of consent; no four year old could meaningfully consent to a parent’s use of content.That’s important, because Tate also says this:So my plan is to chart a middle course, where together we negotiate the boundaries of the stories I write and the images I include. This will entail hard conversations and compromises. But I prefer the hard work of charting the middle course to giving up altogether — an impulse that comes, in part, from the cultural pressure for mothers to be endlessly self-sacrificing on behalf of their children. As a mother, I’m not supposed to do anything that upsets my children or that makes them uncomfortable, certainly not for something as culturally devalued as my own creative labor.Writer Christine Organ has described how “we seem to be creating this unrealistic image of the mother as all-giving, all-knowing, selfless, superhuman who will gladly give up the last piece of apple pie to please her lip-smacking, big-eyed child.” Surely, there’s a way to cut the pie so that I can write about motherhood in a way that takes into account my daughter’s feelings and respects her boundaries. But if I simply cordoned off motherhood as a forbidden subject for my writing, we would never know.In my experience, Tate and Organ are right about the cultural pressure on mothers to place their children’s desires first, and their own needs last. And when children are very small that is not unreasonable. But I do not think it is the case that when parents become pregnant, they are signing up for 18 years of unmitigated second seat, 18 years of subjugating their individuality and personhood to their offspring. Rather, at some point during the process of maturation, children gradually become aware — or they should — that parents are people also, and sometimes they will come first. That 18 years of growth and maturation is a long, slow process of equalization of autonomy between parent and child. We cheer the developmental milestone when our toddlers begin staking out their territories of self-control. Yet over the years, increased privilege is built on the back of concomitant increased responsibility.When I was old enough to care about how I looked in photographs, old enough to be negotiated with on the basis of my consent, I was also old enough to understand that my parents and family had a right to want photographs of me. I think the situation is similar here; if Tate’s daughter has reached the age where she is mature enough to be owed consent, then she is also old enough to be expected to understand why it is unreasonable for her to expect totalitarian control over an experience that doesn’t belong only to her. Maybe she doesn’t understand it right now, but to me that simply means that she has growing to do; growth that will occur through that process of negotiating the boundaries. Growth that needs to occur, that should occur, that will inform her daughter of her own right to personhood when she is on the other side of this equation with children of her own. Growth that will never have a chance to happen if Tate cedes the battlefield immediately rather than pressing for a treaty as she proposes.Footnotes[1] Scary Mommy: A parenting community for imperfect parents[2] The Question That Changed The Co-Parenting Relationship With My Ex[3] If You See A Kid Having A Tantrum In Public, Do This[4] Jennifer Edeburn's answer to My mother says I don't 'contribute' to the family. How do I do so and become more responsible, practically?[5] Do children ever belong on reality TV?[6] ‘Kid Nation’ - Television[7] Duggars Share Photos Of Miscarried Baby At Memorial[8] https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/HealthSafety/pdf/680-001_ABC.pdf