As hand-held email devices proliferate, they are having an unexpected impact on family dynamics: Parents and their children are swapping roles. Like a bunch of teenagers, some parents are routinely lying to their kids, sneaking around the house to covertly check their emails and disobeying house rules established to minimize compulsive typing. The refusal of parents to follow a few simple rules is pushing some children to the brink. They are fearful that parents will be distracted by emails while driving, concerned about Mom and Dad's shortening attention spans and exasperated by their parents' obsession with their gadgets.Now, for the record, I've stated before that I hate being tethered to my BlackBerry. I do, however, respect the concerns about BlackBerry-ing while driving. A co-worker of mine recently got in a car accident on their way in to work, and may or may not have been checking e-mail at the time. And lord knows how many times I've yelled at a certain friend to put down her BlackBerry while driving -- even if we did need an address or directions. (Let the passenger do it.)
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The household tension comes as gadgets like BlackBerrys and Treos -- once primarily tools for investment bankers and lawyers -- have entered the pantheon of devices, including the TV, the personal computer and the cellphone, that have forcefully inserted themselves into the American home. . . . The problem has only gotten worse as more devices combine phone and email. Since people rarely leave home without a cellphone, even events that were once BlackBerry-free are now susceptible to office email.
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One of BlackBerry's biggest defenders, Jim Balsillie, the chairman of Research In Motion, says children should ask themselves, "Would you rather have your parents 20% not there or 100% not there?"
Still, I feel absolutely no sympathy for the whiny upper-middle-class children who complain that their parents are distracted by the BlackBerry while sitting at their soccer games or dance recitals or whatever. Jim Balsillie is completely right: Deal with it, Junior. I mean, at least your parents are managing to be at your event -- all while earning enough money to pay for your extracurricular activities, send you to that fancy summer camp, and pay for you to spend five or so years finding yourself at some small liberal arts college before heading on to grad school.
It must totally suck to be you.
6 comments:
I don't think it's too much to ask for parents to be there for their kids, to give them their UNINTERRUPTED attention. If that makes me a "whiny upper-middle-class child", then so be it. Parents make the decision to have children; they have to live the consequences and responsibilities of that decision, just like everyone else.
It's one thing to be occasionally called away for an emergency phone call or something like that. It's quite another to be physically present at the event but have no idea what happened. (And, possibly annoying the other parents that were watching the event.)
Sure, my father worked hard to provide for us, but he and mom also worked to be at the events I didn't even expect them to be at. For example, when I was sound tech for a couple high school plays, they still came and watched the play, even though "sound tech" was a tiny part for those plays. And they didn't show up with a cell phone, crackberry, or other crap - they gave me their undivided attention. The world still turned even though they were out of reach for a couple hours. Shocking.
Well, then you were lucky. A heck of a lot of people had fathers who couldn't be there for most things because they couldn't get out of work early enough, had two-hour-long commutes, or were out of town on frequent business trips.
Plus, the world is a lot different now with the advent of these communications tools. If you don't make yourself accessible to your bosses when they need you, they'll find someone who will.
Ultimately, if these kids had to choose between their parents having to miss the event or being there but with a BlackBerry, I'm sure they'd choose the latter. I know I would have.
Gem of a post today! I hate those future "trustafarians"!
I am having a very hard time mustering up any sympathy for these kids.
However. I agree w/both you and RJ: it is NOT too much to ask parents to just leave the damned blackberry at home and be w/their kids. Shame on those parents. They are instilling this value into their children and it will just self-perpetuate until eventually, families will no longer speak. They will just IM each other from their blackberries across the dinner table.
But on the plus-side, employers will be irrationally content b/c none of their employees will ever expect to not be available.
And Dara, I am not speaking of commutes, or working late or any of that. I understand that these things happen. What I mean is: when parents have set-aside time to be w/their kids; league games or school plays or whatever, they should be there. Turn off the phone and just be with your kids...
ok. I am putting my soap box away for this minute. haha. ;-)
I still think that these kids are asking a lot. Ignoring work for an hour or so to watch a dance performance, or soccer game -- fine, if you can do it. But turning off the BlackBerry and/or cell phone once you leave the office is ridiculous.
As lawyers, my coworkers and I are expected to have our BlackBerrys with us all the time -- and to check it quite often. Stuff comes up, and it can happen at any time -- especially when you're doing business with people on the other side of the world. If you miss something it can cost millions of dollars. But the plus side is that you're no longer tethered to your desk waiting for the phone, fax, or e-mail.
So, to me, it's an easy decision. A little bit of distraction is a small price to pay for the flexibility to not be at the office. And if these options were available to my dad when we were kids, I'm sure he would have taken them and been at a lot more school plays.
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