I think that’s the ideal position (and I would have loved to have had a mother like you – I’ve often thought that when I’ve seen comments you’ve written on Rachel’s posts!) Unfortunately in my case the situation is somewhat different – I didn’t have the happiest of childhoods (to say the least), I’m now in my thirties, and I also live on the other side of the world to my parents. They’re very unlikely to find my LJ in any case, but I sometimes write about issues from the past and it’s important to me to know that they’re not reading it. Particularly since my mother and I have been estranged for some years now.

Ah well!

Aww, I’ll always love you, mumsy.

I am in the unusual position (I imagine) of being a parent whose children also have LJs. They may well screen some of their posts from me, but I certainly don’t screen mine from them. Sometimes, they write things that I don’t feel comfortable with and they may well reciprocate – the thing is, I respect them as people and I fully expect that they will not be clones of me and will have their own ideas and sensibilities and if they choose to use language that I dislike – so be it – they’re not using it in my house. I have no idea what they screen from me, and I really don’t care. I would hope that, if they consider it important enough, they will talk to me about it.

I don’t screen anything. Here we come to the crux of it: although I am happy to read or ignore whatever my children write (and if that means, on occasion, slagging off the parents, that’s ok), I do hold back a great deal when talking about myself and my relationships – not that I’m holding a great deal back, but I think that there should be some distance between parents and children, and that if there is some area of mystique, then in that case, the parent should hold the upper hand. What I mean is, I suppose, that if I were to reveal everything about myself to my children, it might distort their sense of me – and their love to me is everything – whereas, nothing my children could do or say could every alter my fundamental love and trust in them.

…I notice that you haven’t commented on my previous post… 🙁

I noticed that 😉

Um, I mean your second point of course, not your first one! 😛

It’s easy. Just try harder 🙂 🙂

How can I not listen to your opinion when you speak so much sense?!

How come you always manage to articulate things so much better than me?

It’s interesting though – this post I *chose* to make public and also remove the screening of anonymous comments…

I say phooey!

On several counts.

The Internet was invented to allow the US government to continue communications through nuclear war (or other catastrophic happening). The WWW was invented to help particle physicists in geographically diverse locations communicate effectively. Whatever you choose to do or not do will have zero effect on those :-).

Being less pedantic and biting my tongue over other parts of that argument 🙂 if you choose to not add some of your thoughts to the collective pool of words in the web then you still aren’t removing anything! If they’re things that you won’t say in a public place but you will say in a semi-private place then you’re even less removing something.

In short…do what works for you. Yours is the only opinion that matters.

Especially don’t listen to my opinion! 🙂

I think he’s silly 😉 If it’s a choice between screening, and not posting at all … if LJ did not have a friends-only option I would either not have an LJ, or I would write posts about my cats every day. I like to write about more personal things, and I like to have an idea of who’s reading. Yeah, it’s not 100% safe, but I can be reasonably certain that my parents won’t stumble across it. That’s the most important thing to me.

Lots of people hide details about their jobs from public view because it’s very easy for an employer to find you. And if you said something unflattering, well, then you’re in trouble!