Was I unreasonable... to 'steal' a comprising photo of my child ....

[slanleat]

... even if that child is now an adult of 24?!

We were at my DH's family christmas party last night and it had been suggested that they all bring any old family photos they had along to view and bring back some memories. We arrived in and one of the first things that happened was one of my BIL's came up to me with a photo of a small nude boy child and made a joke about 'has it gotten any bigger over the years'. I actually initally thought it was a photo of BIL.

It was in fact a photo taken of my DS when I was in the hospital after having my DD1. And when looking through the other photos I came across another nude photo of him taken at the same time. My DH is in both of the photos. DS is eating, DH having a cuppa and toast... DS was 2yrs3mths. And I will say straight out that there is clearly nothing sexual about them, but its also not the type of photo I took of my kids.

I would often let them have 'nudey time' after baths etc but would never have thought to take a camera out for it.

So I took the two photos and put them into my handbag, with my DS's knowledge. His partner was at the party too, and she agreed with me that she thought it was 'creapy' that they were passing the photos around.

My DH seems to think it was unreasonable and I was stealing someone else's photos/property. I just said well its my child and I want the pictures. Must have been fairly strongly worded too, cause he left it at that.

But what do you think ... was I out of order?

There it is again. If you are not thinking paedophile why is it inappropriate?

It isn't a crime to not want your child to be photographed naked.

Just to give a different viewpoint, it's pretty hard to find baby/childhood pics of me & my Dsibs where we're not naked. When clearing out my late gran's house recently found an utter shocker where Im sitting cross legged on the floor playing with barbies, facing straight to the camera you can imagine!! I carefully slipped that one out of the album!

We were quite a hippy (naked) household, so it never crossed our minds to think anything dodgy of it - but I know people feel V differently about nudity, so I don't think you would have been U to ask for BiL for the photos back, or flag up why they & his comments made you/DS uncomfortable... stealing them perhaps a little OTT. But then again a social worker friend of my parents once said of he didn't know our family he would feel uncomfortable about the pics, so you could even say you're protecting your BiL from any convos like that?

bit worried you all think Im repressing childhood abuse now just hippies, promise!

There is nothing 'compromising' about a naked 2 month old baby.

You sound strange and uptight.

• If your DS is 24 and the photos taken when he was 2 then it would have been the early 90's. We did not have the same awareness then and taking those sorts of pictures was commonplace, as evidenced by this thread. I have tons of pictures of my dc naked, in the bath, paddling pool in the garden, etc. It was not, AFAIK, against the law or any guidelines at that time (the regs cited earlier in the thread are all after 2003).

• the 'joke' was tacky, I have a relative like that

• BIL still has the negatives.

I think it sounds like a lot of fuss about nothing. Babies and young children are naked a lot of the time so they'll turn up naked in the odd photo.

Having said that, if I found any old naked photos of my nieces and nephews now they're in their 20's I'll bin them. It seemed very much appropriate at the time, but a little odd to keep them now they're adults.

Why would you bin them? All my mums generation of rellies have pictures of me and my cousins as naked children and in turn the cousins and I now have pictures of our kids in the same state ... What harm are a few slightly-out-of-focus kid's bums in a shoe box on top of the wardrobe going to do to anyone? If I thought my mum was going to chuck some really sweet shots of me and my brothers making daisy chains starkers I'd be straight in the bin to retrieve them!