Letters to the Editor

• This habit of judging the parenting practices of others is getting tiresome.

  [Read the article: Look who's talking!]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  What's better: refusing to let your kid leave home, and keeping them in to get fat playing Nintendo and watching TV, because you're terrified any time they're out of your sight that they've been abducted, or giving them a cell phone?

  It used to be that parents could let their kids run around and play outside for hours. There were no deadlines to meet, no soccer or karate or piano lessons to go to. There was no need to pile everyone in the car and do the shopping at 6 pm because both parents hadn't gotten home until then. There were a lot of problems with those days, but kids got more exercise and more freedom, they were healthier, and they were better equipped to handle life's problems without having their hands held.

  Nowadays we're overscheduled and terrified of what's outside for our kids. It's not acceptable to let your kids run and play a block away from the house if you're going to need them back for a lesson or because you need to run errands in half an hour, because then you're not going to be able to call them back. Fortunately we have a technological solution for the problem that doesn't involve Mom having to have a gong or a bullhorn. It's called a "cellphone".

  Give your kids a cellphone, and you can be as secure that they haven't been kidnapped yet as you would be if they were at the gum-chewing, TV-watching babysitters (which is to say, not perfectly secure, but better than if you knew nothing of their whereabouts.) Give your kids a cellphone, and you can let them go play two or three blocks away in confidence that when you need them, you can call them home wihtout having to drive around the neighborhood looking for them. Give your kids a cellphone, and if you're running late picking them up from after school care because there was a traffic accident on the highway, you can call them and reassure them.

  Do I think they're appropriate for 6-year-olds? No, they'll lose it. Do I think they're appropriate for all 8-year-olds? My son is 9 and doesn't have one; he'd lose it. But my daughter got one for her 8th birthday because I wanted to be able to stay in touch with her. I'm not paranoid about child abductions, but I live in a big city, and I want her to have the freedom to play in our neighborhood and still be able to call her back when I need her.

  I can monitor her calls because it's a cell phone; every number she dials and every number that dials her is reported on my statement, same as on *my* cell phone statement. She doesn't go over the time allotted because it's pay as you go, and if she runs out of time, she gets no phone. She knows she's not allowed to make long distance calls without permission, and I trust her not to do so since she knows I can check.

  I believe in giving my kids as much independence as they can handle. If a technological tool allows me to give my kids independence that children in another era would have taken for granted, but that people today generally don't feel safe granting their kids, I'm all for it.

  This blog seems incredibly judgmental and dismissive of parenting practices and lifestyles the regular contributors haven't thought of or don't understand. I realize you have space to fill and that you're trying to be funny, but I fail to see how such judgmentalism serves a liberal news site like Salon. Aren't the people who whine and bitch and get all moralistic about parenting practices that don't really hurt anyone supposed to be on the religious right, not the secular left?

  Permalink Thursday, December 22, 2005 08:05 AM