Photo: tativophotos and evrymmnt via Shutterstock / Hartono via Canva
No child should be treated this way.
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Last updated on Oct 30, 2023
A mom on Facebook has outraged friends and strangers alike after a cruel request she made regarding edits to her family photo shoot. She wasn't happy with the outcome of the elaborate photoshoot and decided that she wanted to get the photos edited since there were a lot of photos that she didn’t like. Posting the photos to Facebook, she reached out to see if anyone would be interested in taking up the job.
The woman posted on Facebook asking for her stepson to be photoshopped out of family photos.
Two photos show the mother and three children sitting in a field. As she holds two of her children, whom she shares with her husband, a third child sits further off to the right.
"Is there anyway y'all could remove the kid to the right in these pictures," the woman writes in a Facebook post shared on Reddit. She added that although she loves her stepson, "I do want some without him in them."
Naturally, people were outraged by the woman's post,
“This woman is going to do so much emotional damage to this little boy,” one person wrote, commentary that resonated with adult children who felt they were once in the stepson's shoes themselves.
Photo: Reddit
"What really gets to me now is seeing people tell stories about being step-children who felt unloved (or at least not as loved as their step-siblings) growing up," a person on Reddit told Bored Panda.
It’s unclear whether or not she made the post public for all of her friends to see or if she posted it privately in some sort of photo editing group, but it’s appalling either way.
The biological mother shared her reaction to the post made about her son.
“I had to find out from my youngest son’s grandma because she saw it on a stepmom’s Facebook page she follows,” she told Bored Panda. “Her post was posted on Saturday from what she told me, and she and his father didn’t even inform me of how her original post was.”
She shared that, although she was originally very angry with the stepmother for her post, she was happy that it happened since they’ve gotten a lot of support.
“Emotionally, it started out very badly," she said, "but now I’m really happy about this situation, because of all the support me and my son are getting through this situation.”
The stepmother apologized after receiving backlash from others on Facebook.
“I love [my stepson] and honestly it was stupid for me to even post it in the first place,” she wrote in a post obtained by Bored Panda. “There’s no way I can word it without it sounding bad at this point. I truly am sorry that this is happening.”
She claimed that, although her post makes it sound otherwise, her stepson is not treated any differently than her other children and she simply wanted some more pictures with just her biological kids.
“I regret posting it but there is nothing I can do to change what I have already done,” she wrote.
While it's normal to love your biological and step-children differently, it should not affect the way you treat them. As this boy's biological mom put it, if you're in a situation in which stepchildren are involved, "get to know the children before you get married. Build a relationship with them," she told Bored Panda. "And if your not willing to do that—Do Not Marry Their Parent.”
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.