TechNOlogy
Technology is rewiring parenting as it rewires humans. As we adults adjust to the internet and email and cell phones, our children require guidelines for their use and hopefully, an ethics of human interaction even when the human is pixellated and in Tajikistan. But even before our babies can use a mouse, even when they are still the size of a mouse and look like a fish, we connect to other parents via parenting websites like Babycenter and chat about breastfeeding, diapering and natural childbirth. We discuss C-sections with people in Kentucky and Braxton-Hicks with people in Birmingham. We ransack the internet for information about morning sickness, acid reflux and sleep deprivation. We believe, in this information sodden time, that the answers are out there, somewhere, if we could only find the right search term. Instead of turning to our mothers and grandmothers and aunties and old family friends (who are probably so far away that they’re only a phone and pixel presence too) we go to the computer, love it, lean on it and ravage it for the support we need, the answers we long for. It’s a mixed blessing.
However, no matter what you think about electronic parenting, this (baby-behavior tracking software) is going too far. Too too far. Hey, don’t tune it to your child and trust your instincts and go with the flow. Get software to track your feeding times, napping times and pooping sessions. Don’t exercise your braincells back into pre-pregnancy form by attempting to remember when you last had three hours sleep — just check your baby-tracking program which will tell you everything you want to know!
This sort of manipulative trap preys on the weakened and nervous state of the new parent — lost in the cold, isolating world of modern parenting without the historical support network of interfering old biddies (oh how I long for an interfering old biddy), suddenly parenting software seems like support. It isn’t. It will drive you up the pole and round the bend, if you aren’t already there because babies are people — with as many idiosyncracies and idiocies as any adult you know. The only way to baby-whisper them is to make friends with them and figure out who they are and what sort of things they like to do and whether they prefer beer or lager or even port (not really — that’s just a metaphor. Just in case child services is investigating, you know).
Of course, I regularly attempt to control the volume of the backseat passengers by reaching for the radio knob, revealing my own odd relationship to parenting and technology. (Although when they invent a child-volume control knob, I may well be an early-adopter.)
Once again, you are chock full of insight.
I did not have the internet to lean on when my kids were very young, and my friends hadn’t had babies, so I got a lot of – let’s say – dated – advice. I had to learn to go with my own instincts (once I figured out that everyone else didn’t know my child like I did – duh). That baby-tracking stuff is, well, frightening. They are practically screaming at parents to not trust their instincts. Babies are not programmable.
Poor new parents. They have to dodge Great-Aunt Gertrude’s advice to not spoil the baby by picking him up too often, the annoyance that their friends’ babies sleep through the night right away, AND software baby-tracking ideas. Sheesh.
Wow! This is stuff I’ve never even thought about . . . or even knew existed! How wild! Parenting in the computer age can be scary . . . but exciting at the same time.
Oh my god. That is really swful. It is a manipluative trap. Gross.
Firstly, I don’t understand why you don’t submit this stuff for publication (like in a paper).
Secondly: I DID find humor in tracking poops (something about lifetime poops would help me immensely).
Thirdly: Again, I admit, I don’t have children, but I would LOATHE the idea of boxing myself into a ‘parenting’ trap of internet-based information. The world is much bigger than wires and copyrighted information. And the world of parenting has to be twice as large. Ultimately, there is no duplicate to the innate sense of mothering a woman is born with, and no replicating of hands-on parenting.