Man Is Seen As A Predator For Comforting His Baby Son In the Shower

My brother told me about this story he read in one of his email subscriptions, and then I went to Google it myself.

Man Is Seen As A Predator For Comforting His Baby Son In the Shower

Back in November 2014 a couple's baby boy was sick, throwing up and having a high fever, until the boy's father Thomas decided what might is to cool him down. So he stripped down and stripped his little boy and they both sat in a cold shower together in an attempt to take the fever down. Although a noble effort, the boy was still very sick, getting worse, and having labored breathing, so they went to the hospital and found out their son had salmonella.

Man Is Seen As A Predator For Comforting His Baby Son In the Shower

His wife Heather Whitten is a photographer and is the one who took the photo. She herself was moved by the beauty of it, of her husband caring so much like that. "I snapped a couple of pictures," she told TODAY Parents. "It was just beautiful. It was not surprising or anything out of the ordinary; it's how he has always been with the kids.... I document our family just how we are. I kind of see something and I just grab my camera."

She later posted the photo on Facebook which went viral, getting over 130,000 Likes and 30,000 re-shares. Many people were just as impacted by it, though others weren't, with some people criticizing it as perverted, and Facebook even deleted the photo twice before finally allowing it to stay. Though Heather decided to remove it herself once and for all later. "I wanted to take it down just because I thought it would get blown out of proportion. I thought the point was getting missed."

https://www.today.com/parents/photo-dad-comforting-his-son-shower-goes-viral-t92271

The couple has 4 kids, and her husband Thomas is in the Air Force, which may have been why he decided to try the shower with the boy if he was trained in survival.

Man Is Seen As A Predator For Comforting His Baby Son In the Shower

People are so messed up...

Even I was touched by the photo when I saw it myself. I didn't see a single thing wrong or perverted about it. Such a situation with people's views tells us how we still are. No one would've thought it was predatory or perverse if the boy's mother was the one in the shower with the baby, and we know that. Or if it was some woman not even related to the baby. If a woman really was in the photo, it could've possibly turned out to be child pornography - that women commonly take payment to be in - yet none of us would ever suspect that or think it. But a guy has his clothes off with his own blood son in an effort to help him, and people think it's something sick.

These are the kind of things that make you feel like there's no hope for the world. Something great and beautiful is done, yet people twist it for evil in their minds. We complain and complain as a society about fathers this and fathers that, and talk about how maternal women are, yet this guy shows pure paternity and we still aren't happy.

All you can do is commend the good thing that was done, and shake your head at the world.

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What Girls & Guys Said

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  • So many have been harmed by real predators, that the hype and urge for awareness has resulted in many seeing predators even where there aren't any.

    Most don't know the difference anymore between innocent child photography and child porn, and just assume that any adult taking snapshots of a child that is less than fully clothed must automatically have the latter in mind.

    Such is how predators do their worst damage: not so much by way of how they hurt their direct victims, as indirectly by how they poison the mind of society at large, till windmill-chasing makes it harder and harder to recognize a real threat in time.

    • "Most don't know the difference anymore between innocent child photography, and child porn" That isn't the issue. Women take photos like that all the time. It is only when a man does it the same thing that people have a problem with it. Society can't accept that men can be loving nurturing parents, and only want to see them as sexual predators that hurt the innocent.

    • @heavensgift2girls : Quite true. LBJ's legacy in a nutshell. Fathers were reframed in society's mind's eye as "not really essential," so many walked out, and never became true men. And with all the men who then forgot how to be nurturing or relevant, came a new notion in women that somehow, they are bears and not humans, where the man is little more than a sperm donor who would devour his own kids if they got in his way.

  • Some people look at a child and adult and immediately see victim and perpetrator. These people are invariably broken in some way and always seem surprised when you point out "Gee, were you abused as a child? Have you ever had a voluntary pleasurable sexual experience?" And then they start screaming at you that their trauma gives them near superhuman abilities to see crime which us non victims are apparently blind to.

    They are to be pitied. But never ever actually listened to in a way that leads you to act on their warped view of the world.

  • People nowadays are paranoid...

    • @CosmicallyCombined "I am thoroughly convinced that you are not worth the excessive time" Yet, you keep answering me. Interesting. You keep repeating the same things over and over almost like you have nothing new to say, but you just have to say something because you like the attention I am giving you. Is that it? Do you like the attention I am giving you?

    • Stop obsessing over me because you will never be heard and taken seriously from me the way you you’d like to. I don’t respect your intellect, I don’t respect your maturity level, and I don’t respect your nasty mouth therefore conversing with you is pointless and unproductive. If you want to be taken seriously by me, then fix your mouth before you open it otherwise don’t expect me to put up with your negative, toxic, combative BS.

    • @CosmicallyCombined
      "Stop obsessing over me"
      I... I... I can't... This thread has been going for so long that now I fear the end of it will leave a void. I think I am slowly falling in love with you.

      "therefore conversing with you is pointless and unproductive."
      But you keep doing it. I am starting to feel like you are slowly falling in love with me too !

      I am starting to actually enjoy talking with you. It's obvious how much my intellect has made an impression on you and hearing how much you find me intoxicating have really made me want to hear more from you.
      Can't wait to hear from you again ! tata !
      render.bitstrips.com/.../...-132720581_1-s4-v1.png

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  • now you know how us females feel about the whole breast feeding problem we have. I agree this picture is not inappropriate in the least. Everything was covered that needed covered and showed love and family

    • @Zendrya Not the same thing. Women breast-feeding isn't seen as sexually predatory or pedophilic. It just makes some people uncomfortable, but it doesn't incite potential sexual crime in our minds.

    • But both this picture and breast feeding are being sexualized. Sexualized in different ways but same result.

    • @Zendrya How is breast feeding sexualized?

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  • Some people just takes offense in anything and everything. Geez man... People like to point fingers and/or play the victim card when there really are no victims. I'm, child less, but not ignorant about child-raising and parenting. There are Bad parenting, but this isn't it. The kid is still too young and probably too sick to even question what it is that daddy have that's touching my leg? He's a couple of years before that time comes. I do think though, that daddy doesn't need to be completely naked to sit in the shower with his kid. He could've still worn his under wear and everything would have been fine. A wet underwear is not the end of the world. I'm not criticising him, if he feels comfortable naked then with a child that age and that ill, It's not a Bad thing. They could've just später themselves a lot less grief if he's sore underwear.

  • i think this whole thing has been blown out of proportion from every angle possible. all he was doing was trying to help his child.

    people question everything. someone can't do something nice for someone else without there being judgement or a negative reaction to it. there is simply always one hater out there or many. there are actually nice people out there in the world. seriously there are.

    i think what all this stems down to is we all think differently. my initial reaction was when i saw the mytake question and photo was what is all this about? read it and then understood what the picture was all about. sometimes we need to know the facts before we form any kind of opinion.

  • out of context it does looks pretty weird.

  • Nah I disagree. How about taking the kid to the hospital first thing instead of exposing himself and trying to give his son hypothermia? Or here's a novel idea:

    acetaminophen. It's the active ingredient in pain relievers and doubles as a fever reducer. Modern medicine cures illness not cold showers. I don't think it's insensitive of me to find a child sitting on a naked mans lap disturbing, even if it is his own son that's still weird and weirder still is that it was his first course of action vs I don't know anything else that would actually have helped the kid.

    I'm not going to go so far as to call the dad a pervert, because in his mind he might have actually thought that would work. I will however call the mother a weirdo for stopping to take a picture of them naked, then posting it on Facebook? Wtf? I must be missing this inspiring cuteness you think is there.

    • I don't think he was trying to give his son hypothermia; he was trying to get his fever down by cooling him off. Also, the kid wasn't taken directly to the hospital due to the family's lack of knowledge of the severity of the illness. Also, not everyone knows that acetominophen doubles as a fever reducer; most people see a pain reliever and will only take a pain reliever for what it is said to do: relieve pain. On top of that, they probably didn't have acetaminophen at hand at the time. A child sitting on a naked mans lap is only disturbing to you because society has taught us that men can't care for their children like women can, which is just one of the very discriminatory ideology too prevalent in our society. Additionally, the fact that it's his own son should make less weird (in fact diminish it to 0 weirdness) because he helped create him from his own genes. The mom posted the picture because she's a photographer, an artist with an eye for beauty and a passion to capture it.

    • @QuarterNote nope, it's still weird. I get that maybe for some families in some cultures this is fine and it might not have such a gut reaction with me if they had just done it in private and left it at that, but taking a picture of them naked and posting it on social media is not "art" michealangelos murals are art, composed music is art, taking a picture of naked people is not art. It has nothing to do with society conditioning me, I don't give care what the rest of society thinks, I think it's weird whether it's naked child and dad or naked child and mother. I can think of about a hundred more sensible ways to deal with that situation and I'm not even a parent.

    • You can think of so many other ways to handle the situation... Because you aren't IN the situation. Regarding art... I want you to look up an artist for me, I can't link you to her, because her stuff is not friendly to this site, but i want you to look up Sally Mann. Have a look at her stuff. I want you to identify whether or not the fact that most of her works are of her own kids, gives you the same gut reaction this picture did. And let me know. I'm not putting you down, or trying to school you or whatever, it simply irks me when people try to define what art is, when knowing very little about what they're saying. So please answer so I can make my point. You don't have to agree with me, just, humour me.

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  • It is beautiful :) Great photo too

  • I read somewhere that the reason they put him in the shower was because he had horrible diarrhea and was pooping and puking nonstop. The shower seemed like the best option, since all the liquids could just run down the drain. His dad probably got in with him to comfort him. I'm sure it was pretty traumatizing for the poor little guy.

  • It's quite sweet. How is that perverted? People don't have anything better to do, so they love blowing things out of proportion.

  • I'm telling you, it's this fucked up society. Any little "unnatural" photo or something "racy" is considered "pedo"... I fucking hate this generation or century. I think this was beautiful.

    • Totally agree.

  • People these days have twisted ways of seeing things. They drag a simple, sweet picture into something really nasty. Nothing nasty or perverted with the picture it's their minds that are nasty!

  • Im sure it's completely innocent and they look like a great family, a great dad too. It's just a little unnecessary and that's probably why it gets some negative feedback

  • At least he wasn't arrested by fbi

    • Because you have to be smart to work for the fbi.

    • No cos people are fucken paranoid

  • There is nothing shameful about a father being a father. The fact that it was perceived as perverted just bears witness to how screwed up our society's notion of fatherhood truly is. People do not think that men can be fathers or that it is okay for them to be, yet then they ironically complain about deadbeat fathers who do nothing.

  • I wonder if it was the Misandrists that called this father a "pervert". Mothers always post similar pictures, yet because of double standards fathers can't. This is very sad.

  • A key detail is left out that the child had severe diarrhea. That's why the father was in the shower 1 to cool his fever and 2 to wash the feces away. I would of probably done the same because even keeping underwater on its unsanitary to have cloths covered in human waste on.

    • Also a good point.

    • My boyfriend says the biggest issue he has with this is the parents waited so long to take the kid to the hospital. He says that high of a fever in a child should have been a doctor/er vist asap

    • @LilWeezey understoond but maybe that was the only thing available or the solution the doctor gave them. Too many circumstantial stuff. You and I are neither right or wrong.

  • That's a beautiful photo, it just shows the viewer the bond between father and son.

  • I can understand Facebook not wanting that type of pic on their website, but Facebook was FORCED to act that way because of the outrage.

    Facebook isn't to blame in my opinion, any business has to respond to their target demographic.

    -----

    I personally find the photo touching, a father comforting his son in sickness.

    • Yet the photo was well-recieved by a lot of people on Facebook or it wouldn't have gotten all the Likes and re-shares that it did.

    • Unfortunately the few outweighs the many; look at the outrage over businesses not wanting to build a separate "gender neutral" bathroom!

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