I suspect photos of your child suffice in much the same fashion. I have another friend who only recently became a mother; while her profile photo is of her, I’ve looked at enough pictures of the wee babe that I automatically associate the two: “Wow, there’s Christine’s daughter!”

This is to say: both of these photographs of something not the person make me think of the person. It’s not a loss of identity in either person’s case.

If you are honestly the exact same person as a parent that you were before you became a parent, then that’s a problem. Your life must change, your focus must shift at least somewhat, because you now have another person wholly dependent upon you. Loss of self can happen, but it’s certainly not the norm, and a changing profile picture is in no way indicative of this. My default pic on Facebook is of me alone; on MySpace it is of me and all three kids. More of my “friends” on MySpace know me as a parent, so it makes sense to emphasize that part of myself there. I do think there is something to be said for tailoring your presentation of yourself to the situation you’re in. I don’t mind being “B—’s mom” at her school, but when I’m at school, I’m just Sabra. And quite honestly, while I’d love to see your pix of your kids and chat about them before or after class, I don’t want to see pictures of them during your presentation unless they’re somehow a part of said presentation.

What I hate the most about the article is what you get at at the end of your post- this notion of arbitrarily judging other people without even knowing them. This is a horrendous practice that most of us play into in many facets of our lives, not just when discussing feminism or parenting. You don’t know me, you don’t know anything about who I am or what I’ve gone through to get where I am, so don’t judge me based on some smallish detail of my life.

As an aside, we must be just about the same age. I turn 29 in ~10 days.

Why isn’t overseeing the development of said child into a successful contributing member of society an acceptable “life’s work” and the very pinnacle of the development of “one’s talents”?

Sort of depends on whether it’s freely chosen or not, no?

Now, consider how many ways for the “freely” to be leached away.

I guess we’ve all had those conversations with uber-parents that go something like:
“How are you doing?”
“Timmy just started teething!!!”
“Great, but what about you?”
“Janie is doing great with potty training!!!”
“Have you forgotten how to use personal pronouns?”
“Hannah just started learning about nouns and verbs is school!!!”

I just have to hold out hope that new parents eventually grow out of it and rediscover their individualism. Setting your profile pic to kid pics is probably just the latest form of showing off baby pictures even though no one seemed to have asked about them.

Why isn’t overseeing the development of said child into a successful contributing member of society an acceptable “life’s work” and the very pinnacle of the development of “one’s talents”?

You have to make sacrifices and you have to make choices. Trying to have it all almost never works out. That goes for both genders. Regardless of his means of gaining a paycheck, raising a child successfully should become the fathers main career as well.

. You can do whatever you want with it, but a “profile picture” is meant to be an avatar, that is to say, a representation of yourself in the “virtual world”.

For someone as literal as myself, it does make me wonder what the intent of putting a picture of something other than a representation of your self on there is. Fortunately, I am aware of my literalness and try not to make generalizations based on my faulty interpretation of one piece of data. A little thought quickly reveals that a person’s children are a representation of at least one part of their life and then it makes perfect logical sense to present it as an avatar.
Me? My profile picture is of an iguana. Feel free to draw whatever conclusions you like

That said, since I know what Catharine does, I’m appreciative and indebted to wonderful individuals like her.