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The Ethicist recently answered a question that I posed to myself a while back. I was interested in the content of a friend's blog, which she has opted to keep secret for the meantime. She posted a comment here that I am free to look for it. In light of The Ethicist's response I think now that I won't go looking for it—but I may ask for the url from time to time.
Another friend of mine discovered his daughter's blog, and later the blog she created specifically to be not-for-parental consumption. The following letter to the Ethicist and its response made me think of that situation and how I might have handled it. It also reflects why I read The Ethicist each week.
I stumbled upon my college-age daughter's online journal. I have always regarded diaries as off limits to outsiders and have scrupulously avoided even casual glimpses of my children's personal writings. Now, however, my daughter is offering her daily postings to the world. I imagine that the idea of her father's reading her innermost thoughts would lead to self-censorship, and I don't want to spoil a writing venue she enjoys. Is it ethical for me to read her journal without telling her? —Anonymous, New Jersey
Don't ask me; ask her. And respect her wishes.
Were this a stranger's online diary, you could read voraciously. When someone publishes, on paper or on-screen, it's fair to assume that she consents to everybody's reading her work -- fair but not entirely reliable. Sometimes an online journal is accessible because its writer neglected to set up password protection, an act not of literary openness but of technical naivete. And sometimes what a writer is willing to reveal to a casual reader, she is reluctant to reveal to her father. The key is that your daughter not think herself unobserved if you are, in fact, observing her.
Age is also a factor. We grant a 3-year-old little right to privacy. Her parents may watch her around the clock -- what she eats, when she sleeps, how she brushes her teeth -- even when she thinks herself unseen. Few women your daughter's age would willingly submit to such scrutiny.
As the father of a daughter about the age of yours, I sympathize with your wanting to know what she's up to. But it would be no more ethical for you to read her journal surreptitiously than to skulk around her campus hoping to pick up snatches of her conversation.
Posted by Underblog at May 10, 2005 2:14 PM
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sometimes, caught in a web of thought and public discourse, we forget the most basic sorts of interaction. The question in this case isn't is this right? but how do you feel about it, dear?
Posted by: Sherman at May 10, 2005 4:46 PM
You don't even have to go looking for it.
Posted by: NGS at May 11, 2005 10:32 PM