In my personal life (outside of the forums, I guess) I am a very “You don’t need to know the details of my personal life unless I explicitly tell you” kind of person, and GM and I don’t want our pregnancies and kiddos to be posted on Facebook and such until the kids are old enough to understand and use Facebook etc and give consent.
I’m trying to pre-plan to navigate this with my parents. When we told them we got married and shared the photo we took of us eloping, my mom immediately posted the photo and the news to Facebook without asking. I was annoyed, but like, I hadn’t told her not to? So I kind of let it go.
I want to be a lot more explicit about boundaries with kiddos. So I’m planning on mailing with my announcement gift a bunch (10? 20?) of pregnancy announcements and envelopes that they can send to whoever they want, but they have to personally mail an announcement or call/text. No Facebook posts to everyone.
But I also don’t want to over-censor their lives. I don’t think it’s a bridge to far to ask not to post their pictures or any PII such as name, birthday, which of her children’s kid it is, etc… I figure if the people reading the Facebook posts haven’t been directly told these things, I am certainly not close enough to want those individuals to know, and my paranoid ass doesn’t want Facebook to know.
But I think I should be chill if my mom or MIL wants to mention at some point on a feed how excited she is to be a grandmother, that she got to see grandchild(ren) or ultrasound or in person or something. It is important for her to be able to tell people about the exciting aspects of her life, and if she can omit personal details there’s no big issue with that.
Has anyone else navigated family members that are habitual Facebook sharers? What has been effective in drawing boundaries? Did you get pushback you hadn’t expected?