Lots of people here have reported the existence of naked childhood photos of themselves and are now grown adults and not embarrassed by them. My parents certainly didn't whip out those pics on my prom night, but they are in albums and I don't care if people look at them. The difference between a naked kid picture and a tampon or hangover picture is vast. Kids actually enjoy being naked, and when I look back on my own childhood photos I can see that joy radiating out of them.

Also, parents have the right to document their kids' lives while keeping aspects of their own lives private. My parents have one picture of me from when I was about three-- I was very sick and had been throwing up so much that I eventually fell asleep with my head rested right on the toilet seat. I'm not embarrassed by that picture in the least-- on the contrary I think it's sweet and it shows that my parents were right there next to me while I was going through a difficult time. I wouldn't want my mom to take a picture like that now, but I also don't want her packing me healthy lunches or wiping my butt anymore either. Kids and adults are different, and I don't think my parents needed to document their own illnesses in order to justify taking a picture like that.

Anyway, my dad has no problem letting me see my grandmother's albums of his childhood, which contain pictures of him happily bathing as a child. He's not embarrassed. These kinds of pictures are so normal, it's hard for me to even imagine why someone would be bothered by them.

...I'm assuming the kids had their clothes on for those. So why aren't more people up in arms about the fact that these little kids were drug in to be interviewed alone, by a stranger, about sex abuse and the SESSSIONS WERE NOT RECORDED. Where is the protection for the child in that? This seems to me to be absolutely outrageous.

“I have photographed my boys in diapering/bathing/toweling/potty situations, because I love them and want to provide a full record of our growing and happy family.” (not singling out this guy -- there have been numerous other posters with similar boasts)

--------

In the interests of a full record of your growing and happy family, I trust you are also photographing your wife’s morning sickness, the baby’s projectile vomiting, yourself in the throes of diarrhea, not to mention assorted hangovers, menstrual leakages, migraines, wardrobe malfunctions and just plain sitting there looking stupid. All for the record, of course.

Which photographs will embarrass the children, of course, and be used gleefully by you for that very purpose. I’m sure you will waste no opportunity to whip out those adorable potty photos when your son brings his date over before the prom or when his fiancee shows up with her parents for an engagement lunch, all for the record of course, because you love them. I suspect that on those occasions you will forget to show the potty photos of yourself or the tampon photos of your wife, because –- oops, you forgot to take them in the first place. Guess the record isn’t so full after all.

BTW, if one of these years your camera ends up mysteriously smashed, check your sons’ clothing for shards.

Given we have a reasonably large number of Salon readers condemning this guy and his family, it's very clear he did indeed exercise poor judgment taking his photos in. While he shouldn't become paranoid, a little bit of discretion is indeed advisable in the future, and in addition to feeling angry and outraged, he should also perhaps learn something from it, in the "measure twice, cut once" sense.

Being from the Alaskan Bush, I thought nothing of this but now I think he was out of touch with his society. That's excusable, but not admitting it and learning from it is not.

To all you fellow ladies who point out how impossible it would be for the girls to participate in the "peeing out the campfire" ritual:

It depends. Small girls usually do go through a phase when they prefer to (try) peeing standing up. I know I did when I was between three and eight or so. And since I spent all of my summers at a cabin without indoor plumbing I had plenty of time to practice. And I got pretty darn good at it at one time.

A small girl, with a skirt, peeing standing up? Very possible. Not messy at all.

I couldn't attempt it today without making an unholy mess, but I bet I could have "helped" with thar campfire when I was six. Can't be harder than hitting an ant or a bug 30-40 cm in front of me, which was what I amused myself with as a small girl.

The trouble with "erring on the side of the child" is that families where NOTHING BAD IS GOING ON get put through hell--and you better believe that this includes the children as well as the parents. It is very upsetting and traumatic for a child to be put through an investigation of the sort that Mr. Jenkins describes. Even if the parents try to hide it, the children know something is going on. In states where such investigations involve removing children from their homes and placing them in foster care, the children's suffering is incalculable. There is bound to be long-term damage from such trauma, but even if there weren't, it is no trivial thing to cause a young child such suffering even for a short period.

How do you balance the very real effect of such investigations on wrongly accused families vs. the risk of possibly overlooking an instance of real abuse? Does it make sense to ruin--that is not too strong a word--the innocence, happiness and security of 9 families (say, 13 or 14 kids, some of whom will actually be removed from their families for no reason whatever) to save (say) one child from actual abuse? Or is this an instance of destroying the village in order to save it?

Laws concerning mandatory reporting, and the agencies that carry them out, cannot possibly do what they are intended to unless all parties are properly trained and decently supervised, as well as having the right motives and a large dose of common sense.