I am the product of a famous family and the product of a famous divorce. I have seen it done well and fairly and lovingly and I have seen it become a war zone with PTSD results.
If my parents lived in the age of Twitter and TMZ and 24/7/365 media coverage I'm sure there would have been a maniacal media stake out and photos and videos of my father and his 17-year-old girlfriend and images of me and my sister and our mother as we tried to conduct ourselves through our days as we grappled with our new reality and the loss associated with it.
I am, of course, concerned about how we all are fixated on the children. Looking for expressions of anger and hurt in their sweet faces that the adults have caused them. I'm sure the news media that first posts the images of these children we are hearing about will get rewarded by millions flocking to see if there is a resemblance. We should all be ashamed of ourselves. They are children. They are innocent. We are damaging their lives by our curiosity.
What adults do confounds me. In daily life, politics, globally. We are human and therefore flawed. All of us are flawed. What happens between adults is none of our business. What is our business is how we discuss this with our own children and I hope how we can leave the children of these public and private people alone.
I have had traumas. If I had had traumas and cameras pointed at me all day long as I went to school, walked my pet, had lunch with my parent I don't know what toll it would have taken on me but I do know there would be a toll.
That intrusion is a minefield and we are placing the mines with our prurient interest.
All of my friend's children were born in love. They are all love children. Why do we only use that term for children born out of wedlock? Aren't all children born from marriage born from love? Are we still so locked in the past that legitimacy is determined marriage certificate? What about DNA?
I urge us all to leave them alone. Let them tell us what they want to tell us when they want to tell us what they want to tell us, if they want to tell us.
I for one am going to urge the HuffPost Family to make celebrities' children off limits or I may have to make HuffPost off limits to me.