I watched a video by YouTuber jewelamina about the family vlogging channel Vidya and Pookesh. They’re parents who became famous for their strict parenting methods, and people debating over whether or not they’re good parents.
My opinion on them is that strict anti phone family vloggers demonstrate the same hypocrisy as trad wife influencers. They moral grandstand about how a woman’s duty is being a wife and mother and they should never strive to have jobs or earn money. What are they doing while propagating that message? Earning money through their jobs as influencers. You know, the very thing they claim to be against. The only way it wouldn’t be hypercritical is if they’re giving every single penny they earn to their husbands to have complete control over, but they’re never gonna do that because they’re smarter than that. They know how dangerous it is to have their husbands control all the money, yet they have no problem telling other women to do the opposite. A real trad wife would have no social media presence at all, hence why you never see a trad wife influencer over the age of 40.
Vidya and Pookesh can pat themselves on the back for how great they are at raising their kids all they want. The way I see it, if you don’t allow your kids to have screen time while actively turning them into screen time for other people and profiting off of it, you’re a hypocrite. If their kids aren’t allowed to use the same social media platforms their parents are posting them on, then they’ll be completely oblivious to their parents profiting off of what’s essentially their humiliation. Getting yelled at, scolded, and grounded by your parents is embarrassing for kids. I’d imagine most of us wouldn’t want that to be filmed and posted. Imagine when Vidya and Pookesh kids become adults trying to get jobs, and the interviewer says they’re a fan of their parent’s channel they reference something very personal from their childhoods. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d be horrified if a stranger knew something personal about me. I’d especially be horrified and angry if I found out my parents have been posting the most vulnerable moments of my life for millions of strangers to gawk at. Family blogging is a direct violation of the kid’s privacy because kids can’t consent. Given how Vidya and Pookesh pride themselves on their strictness, I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t care about their kids’ privacy.
I also just plain don’t trust any parent who films and posts their kids being punished because there’s a pattern of the parents who do that end up being revealed to be abusers. Look no further than 8 Passengers. Folks were praising Ruby (and to a lesser extent Kevin) for their strict parenting. They never gave their kids smart phones (and eventually no phones at all), and punished them with chores and exercise whenever they got bad grades or misplaced important items. Then the cracks started to show after the infamous “Chat’s bed was taken away for 6 months for pranking his little brother” video came out. Eventually Ruby (and her negative influence/affair parnter Jodie) was arrested for child abuse and child endangerment. The same happened with the Duggars. They weren’t family vloggers, but they too were praised for being strict with their kids. No phones, no videogames, limited tv, etc. Not only was the oldest son outed as a rapist and pedophile, the parents forced the daughters (aka his victims) to take full blame and do public damage control. Not to mention, none of the kids saw a dime of the money that was earned through the show, despite them being the reason the show was profitable in the first place. Vidya and Pookesh are already rich, but where is all of that money they’re earning by filming their kids going? Are they gonna put in a savings or college fund? Or are they gonna be like every other family “strict” channel and keep it all to themselves and leave their kids high and dry with college tuition because they “don’t believe in handouts.” Hot take, but at least 50% of the money earned through family channels should belong to the kids. No matter how much work the parents put into planning, filming, and editing, their channel wouldn’t exist without their kids. Yet many of those parents respect their kids as people enough to think they deserve the money that was earned off of their labor. Since the kids of family channels aren’t classified as child actors and don’t benefit from the Coogan Law.
Another uncomfortable truth that doesn’t get brought up when it comes to family channels that emphasize strictness, is that a lot of people genuinely hate kids and love seeing them be punished, even if the punishment isn't warranted. The biggest example of this is DaddyOFive, one of the OG popular family channels. Mike’s fans reveled in watching him “pranking” his kids to the point where they’re in tears. He got away with it for so long because he framed it under the guise of discipline. Looking at videos that criticized DaddyOFive, the comments sections were riddled with the most disgusting and disturbing insults and violent fantasies directed towards the kids. Some were even giving suggestions for harsher punishments for the younger kids. Mike and his wife knew this, and that motivated him to keep making those videos all the way up until the law stepped in.
At the end of the day, posting kids online at all is inherently dangerous. Not all social media platforms are built the same, I personally don’t think posting kids on Facebook is that bad. However, TikTok is an extremely public platform. Part of the reason why TikTok gets the most reach out of all the social media platforms is because the algorithm shoves every video in everyone’s faces regardless of whether or not they're interested. This is what leads to the wrong types of people finding family vlogging channels. It’s common knowledge that the silent minority of family vlogger’s fans are pedophiles. Even if the parents never post videos of their kids in swim suits or eating phallic shaped foods, pedophiles will still save and share those videos with their friends for the purpose of satiating their disgusting paraphilias. By choosing to make content featuring their kids, Vidya and Pookesh are actively feeding their kids to wolves whether they intend to or not. Stalking is also an issue. There’s a disturbing amount of grown adults who build parasocial relationships towards the kids of family channels. Many family channels aren’t shy about their full legal names or where they live. All it takes is a handful of details for a stalker to figure out where their kids go to school, or any other locations the kids like to go. Not to mention, thanks to Gen A.I., pedophiles have an easier time making, selling, and sharing child porn. Where do they get the reference material to build the models for those videos? From family channels. There’s nothing stopping a pedophile from taking Vidya and Pookesh’s videos and making child porn of their kids.
So sorry, I’m gonna be a hater and say I don’t trust Vidya and Pookesh and don’t think they’re “good patents.” A good patent would NEVER be a family vlogger and violate their children’s privacy for attention and profit. They just raise their kids in private, OFFLINE, and let how they grow speak on their parenting itself.
As Shari Franke said, “There’s no such thing as an ethical family channel.” No exceptions.
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