Mother Shamed For This Viral Airport Photo

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• “Albert Einstein said, ‘I fear the day that technology will take on our humanity. .. the world will be populated by a generation of idiots’.” – The caption which accompanied this Facebook post, which has been shared close to 66,000 times
• “I absolutely feel as though my privacy was violated.” responds the Mother of 3
• “I ignore the photos and the comments and lean on those close to me who know the real me. I am powerless compared to the internet, and I know that I am the best momma to my girls and I know that I cherish them and am raising them the best I can”

Part-time pediatric nurse. Molly Lensing, who lives in Illinois and has 3 kids has become the topic of another parenting debate.

She’s the woman at the center of this controversial photo, which shows Lensing seemingly ignoring her daughter, who’s lying on a blanket on an airport floor. The image first went viral last year and put Lensing under the wrath of the internet:

The caption on this Facebook post, which has been shared close to 66,000 times, says, “Albert Einstein said, ‘I fear the day that technology will take on our humanity. .. the world will be populated by a generation of idiots’.”

Now Lensing’s shared her side of the story with Today, and she has cautioned against quick public shaming on the internet.

Lensing tells today that she was traveling home with her 2-month-old daughter Anastasia in a Colorado airport when she was caught up in a Delta computer shut-down.

In the midst of all the kerfuffle, “Anastasia had been held or in her carrier for many hours. My arms were tired. She needed to stretch. And I had to communicate with all the family members wondering where the heck we were.”

So the tired Mom placed Anastasia down for a moment while she tried to get their travel plans back on track.

Months after their flight, she started seeing images of her “parenting fail” circulate on the internet, and strangers began to not only identify her by name but also send her personal messages on her private social media.

While this would scare most people, Lensing was especially worried because of her line of work: “I absolutely feel as though my privacy was violated. I had recently started working on a labor floor, and I was terrified of my co-workers or boss seeing the photo and comments and believing that I should no longer work with infants. Thankfully, this never happened.”

UnfortunatelyLensing, cannot do much to prevent a once-viral photo from going viral again (and possibly again), she’s emerged from her experience with internet shaming with a lesson which most people can relate to: “I ignore the photos and the comments and lean on those close to me who know the real me. I am powerless compared to the internet, and I know that I am the best momma to my girls and I know that I cherish them and am raising them the best I can.”