Pink Defends Photo Of Her Children Running Through A Holocaust Memorial

As a celebrity mom, Pink is no stranger to having her parenting choices criticized. The singer has repeatedly lashed out at what she calls "the parenting police" after being shamed and attacked for sharing photos of her children on social media. Most recently, Pink defended her kids running through a Holocaust memorial as a celebration of life after critics attacked the family, accusing them of not being respectful.

Pink, who's currently on an international tour, managed to squeeze in a few hours of sightseeing with her children between performances in Germany over the weekend. At one point, Pink shared a few snaps on Instagram, including one that showed her children, 8-year-old daughter Willow and 2-year-old son Jameson, running through the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.

Almost immediately, some people began to accuse Pink of allowing her children to be disrespectful and characterized her children's actions as behavior fit for a playground, not a memorial. "This is wrong for them to be running around at the holocaust memorial," one user commented. "You need to explain to them to respect the place."

Another user claimed that "a memorial for dead people is not the place to have fun" and that Pink should "maybe leave the kids behind next time."

As the criticisms continued to roll in, Pink returned to Instagram to defend her kids. "These two children are in actuality Jewish, as am I and the entirety of my mothers family," the singer wrote in the photo's caption. "The very person who constructed this believed in children being children, and to me this is a celebration of life after death."

Pink's not wrong. According to Architect's Journal, Peter Eisenman, the architect who designed Berlin's Holocaust Memorial said he wouldn't mind seeing children playing hide and seek amongst its pillars while speaking at the memorial's opening in 2005.

More recently, when the behavior of selfie-taking visitors came under public criticism, Eisenman told the BBC he doesn't consider a memorial to be sacred ground and thinks it's fine that children run around the one he designed. "People have been jumping around on those pillars forever," he told the BBC in 2017. "They've been sunbathing, they've been having lunch there and I think that's fine."

Eisenman went on to tell the BBC he felt there was a clear difference between his memorial in Berlin and actual burial sites like Auschwitz. "There are no dead people under my memorial," he told the news outlet. "My idea was to allow as many people of different generations, in their own ways, to deal or not to deal with being in that place. And if they want to lark around I think that's fine." In fact, Eisenman likened his memorial to a meeting place. "It's like a catholic church, it's a meeting place, children run around, they sell trinkets," he said. "A memorial is an everyday occurrence, it is not sacred ground."

While some folks continued to criticize the rocker for allowing her children to run in the memorial, others were more supportive. "I love Berlin too," actor Selma Blair wrote in a comment under Pink's post. "I love that what happened is not being forgotten. I love this celebration of life. I love you."

Intense criticism of both her children and her parenting caused Pink to vow not to share photos of her children during an interview on The Ellen Show in April. "I cried so hard after that because I like to share my family," Pink told Ellen DeGeneres in reference to the attacks she garnered after posting a photo of her son sans diaper. "It's my proudest achievement in my whole life. I'm prouder of my kids than anything I've ever done. And I won't share them anymore. I'm not posting pictures of them anymore."

While the singer acknowledged that people had every right to warn her to be more careful given her fame, she said there was a way to do so in a nice manner. "There's a kind way to be online," she said. "And I'm open to kindness."

Pink's recent Instagram post is one of only a handful of times that she has shared a picture of her children since April. She used the opportunity to again remind people to be kind, writing: "Please keep your hatred and judgment to yourselves."