The BlackBerry Orphans

theodp writes "The WSJ reports that the growing use of email gadgets is spawning a generation of resentful children. In addition to feeling neglected, kids fear BlackBerrys and Treos can put their lives in jeopardy as Mom and Dad type away while driving." From the article: "Like teenagers sneaking cigarettes behind school, parents are secretly rebelling against the rules. The children of one New Jersey executive mandate that their mom ignore her mobile email from dinnertime until their bedtime. To get around their dictates, the mother hides the gadget in the bathroom, where she makes frequent trips before, during and after dinner. The kids 'think I have a small bladder,' she says. She declined to be named because she's afraid her 12- and 13-year-old children might discover her secret."

Comments

Quick

[Bryansix]

Quick, someone find this woman and rat her out to her children!

Teens Making Parents Come to the Dinner Table?

[SlothB77]

I thought it was the other around.

Re:Teens Making Parents Come to the Dinner Table?

[ImaLamer]

That's why I propose that you turn kids into personal secretaries.

There is no need to exclude them from your daily lives when you can include them. They can read you e-mail's, send off reports and respond to instant messages when you drive or while you navigate the office, elevators and more. Take them out of school and take them to work. They will learn your trade and the world while keeping the family bond strong and reinforcing the importance of education. You see, you'll teach them to read much faster when you are driving 60 miles an hour and you need to know the time of your next appointment and what direction you should really be going on the highway.

Maybe employing our own children is the answer to allowing more flex time and true telecommuting.

Can't hide

[chreekat]

The kids 'think I have a small bladder,' she says.

Hehe, so she thinks her kids are as dumb as teenagers think their parents are?

Solution? World Of Warcraft.

[Iriestx]

She should just pick up a couple copies of WoW for the kiddies. She'd never have to deal with their snotty demands of family time ever again... let alone see them outside of their rooms.

Parents

[COMON$]

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.

People seem to think that if you have a kid or reach a certain age it entitles you to have no responsibility. They shout "I am MATURE, I can do whatever I want". Reminds me of the teenagers I work with, whining and pouting about how they know best and don't need to follow rules.

If you are going to be a parent, lead by example. You want your kids to be independent thinkers, then YOU be one. You want your kids to follow rules, YOU follow the rules. I can tell you firsthand with the kids I do volunteer work with that they are very tired of hypocritical parents.

I understand we live in a fast paced world now, but just like your clients, you have to scedule time for your family as well. How many of the blackberry addicts would answer their blackberry if they were with an important customer? What are you saying about your family when you don't extend them the same respect?

Re:Parents

[_Sprocket_]

If a family member gets upset you can always talk to them later that day.

Queue "Cat's in the Cradle" theme tune.

Re:Parents

[lgw]

If a family member gets upset you can always talk to them later that day. If an important client gets upset you could lose business deals and contracts worth millions of dollars.

Family is important. Clients are just money. Probably not even your money. Anyway, if you actually do something the client finds valuable, he'll call back later.

Re:Parents

[RLiegh]

It's like they say, no one on their deathbed ever says "ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann
Ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann

Oh Barbara Ann, take my hand
Barbara Ann
You got me rockin' and a-rollin'
Rockin' and a-reelin'
Barbara Ann ba ba
Ba Barbara Ann"

An open comment to Ross Singletary.

[BAKup]

His dad, private banker Ross Singletary, calls it "a legit concern." He adds: "Some emails are important enough to look at en route."

No. No, no emails are important enough to look at en route. Period.

Get a life, and pay more attention to things around you instead of work. There's a whole world outside, and your kids mental well being is more important than your job no matter what you might think.

Parenting?

[DragonWriter]

Like teenagers sneaking cigarettes behind school, parents are secretly rebelling against the rules. The children of one New Jersey executive mandate that their mom ignore her mobile email from dinnertime until their bedtime. To get around their dictates, the mother hides the gadget in the bathroom, where she makes frequent trips before, during and after dinner.

Huh? The interesting thing isn't about technology, its about parenting styles. When I was a teenager, if I tried to impose rules like this on my parents (regardless of the technology involved), they'd tell me that I could make the rules when I was working and paying the bills and they were living off me.

They'd usually accompany it with discussion of the issue and why they needed or wanted to do whatever it was I wanted them not to do, and might try to find some way to address the issue I was having that made me want to impose the rule. Or they might not. Depending on the circumstances.

But they wouldn't let me pretend I was running the family, and then sneak around to evade my "rules". And, IMO, that's a good thing.

"Avoiding conflict" is not the same as "parenting".

I'm A Government Mule

[eno2001]

I love non-sequitir Subject lines. (And random caps as well) So, I'm a dad. My two year old sees me about two hours a night: after work (6:00PM) and before her bedtime (8:00PM). On weekends she has my full attention except for during her nap which is about an hour and half. In other words I give her as much time as I can. And I still find time to e-mail, post on various forums, compose original music, make movies, work on my photography hobby, work on a variety of computer projects, etc... My wife, a stay at home mom, is with our daughter a lot more than I am by virtue of the fact that she stays at home. So she's DYING for her own time. Our daughter has accepted that if my wife wants to check mail (just standard mail on a laptop, not a crackberry), she should busy herself with something else. Of course within reason. My wife is VERY attentive to our daughter. At the same time if I even make a motion to go anywhere NEAR a computer my daughter starts wailing. She has already somehow intuited that a computer + daddy can sometimes mean a long period of time where I'm not available. Even though I've never really put her through anything like that. I've had work situations where I've had to spend maybe an hour or two on the weekend working on something, but it's been infrequent. So I think kids definitely can deal with it. In reality the black berry is no different from a regular phone. Generations of kids survived mom's gossiping on the kitchen phone in the past. This is not going to be a huge tragedy. Honestly, do any of you resent the time your mom's spent on the phone when you were young?

Those are just the ones you hear about.

[LWATCDR]

"Seems like there are only two kinds: the ones that beat/harm their children and the ones that wish to act like they never had any children!"

Well for the most part these are just the ones you hear about.

There is another issue. Modern culture doesn't place any real value on parenting. If a woman wants too be a stay at home mother she is often looked down on. If a man doesn't want to work on a Saturday to spend time with his kids then he isn't a "team player".
Of course you are supposed to "fit in" being a good parent but heaven forbid you decide that you should give up something or make that a higher priority than work or "personal time".

The good thing is a lot of people ignore culture and do the right thing anyway, you just never hear about them.

Re:Those are just the ones you hear about.

[MoralHazard]

I was out playing pool last night with a friend, in a bar called Ace in the East Village, in Manhattan. (That's New York City.) There's a crowd of khakis-and-blue-oxford-shirt dudes hanging out, pretty loaded, with one woman in the group, early 40s, maybe.

One of the guys comes over and introduces himself, and says he'll buy me a beer if I compliment the woman on her rack. This is a little wierd, but I want to get him off my back, so I strike up a conversation with the woman and ask her where she got her fantastic outfit. (Armani.) We start talking a little, since she IS pretty cute for a cougar, and that she's a investment banker. Her and her partner (also in the crew, nice silver-haired guy) are responsbile for a couple billion in funds.

Then she tells me that she just got divorced a few months back, and she has an 8-year-old daughter at home. We play a couple games of pool, and she's all over my friend and I. We're kind of flattered, but not really in love. At some point, she drifts back to her friends, perhaps sensing our lack of interest. She keeps drinking with her pals, and next thing you know she's dancing on a table.

About an hour later, we're hanging out with the bartender, K., another friend of mine. The bouncer calls K. over the women's rest room because the banker chick is head first in the toilet. K. and the bouncer pull her out, and manage to round up one of her pals to call a car for her and get her home. On the way out, barely coherent and covered with vomit, she sidles past me and tries to give me her phone number. I politely declined.

Now, my mom got divorced in her mid-30s, with three kids to take care of. She'd been out of the work force for 15 years, but she pulled her shit together, went back to school for a masters' degree, and became a teacher. She managed to meet a really nice guy at church, and got re-married, and made a solid home for us and sent us all to college--I never had to work for my tuition. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about how my mother put herself aside, focused on a plan, and never, ever made me sorry that I was her son. She probably had some pretty dark moments, in there, too.

In short, as the banker chick was stumbling out the bar and heading home to her daughter, I couldn't think of anything uglier than that. Parents who forget that they're supposed to be parents first, who feel sorry for themselves and get drunk and slobber on people 20 years younger, are making themselves into something that their kids will not respect. And that's a horrible, horrible thing to do to a kid.

This just in!

[octaene]

This just in: parents in the "Me Generation" are putting themselves before their kids/families/significant others!

Seriously, the woman in this article makes me sick. I know she's an "executive", but you know what? You're not that fscking important. I'd even wager that her company's stock price will stay about the same the following day even if she doesn't send that last e-mail before dessert. Lady, sit the fsck down and eat your dinner.

Re:This just in!

[tabdelgawad]

Favorite quote in this context:

"The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men." -- Charles De Gaulle

group three

[us7892]

The third kind of parents are the ones that make up the vast majority. We spend a great deal of time with our families, and enjoy doing so. There's just no headline in that.

I think

[JustNiz]

the real problem is that these stupid people are giving their whole lives to their employers.

You are always setting an example for your kids!

[onkelonkel]

Something I've slowly realized as a parent is this - "You are always setting an example for your kids." Whether you like it or not, 24/7, wherever you go, whatever you do, if your kids are there you are setting an example. Whether it's a good example or a bad example is up to you. But, "do as I say, not as I do" is not going to work.

For Good Reason

[heli0]

"kids fear BlackBerrys and Treos can put their lives in jeopardy as Mom and Dad type away while driving."

BlackBerry tapping causes car-crunching chain reaction on I-5

Re:Solution? World Of Warcraft.

[grassy_knoll]

She should just pick up a couple copies of WoW for the kiddies. She'd never have to deal with their snotty demands of family time ever again... let alone see them outside of their rooms.

Two words:
"MOM!! BATHROOM!!!"

(shudder)

PS:
YouTube Link if you havent seen that South Park episode

Solution: smash it

[hikerhat]

I suppose kids aren't reading this, but if you are, smash your parent's blackberry. Blackberries are expensive. They might get another one, but after you smash three or four, they won't get more. If their blackberries are issued by their employer, your parent will be fired after you smash two or three. Again, problem solved. Don't be afraid. Your parent my yell at you, make scary faces and noises, and send you to your room. But that's attention, and any attention is better than none. And they'll get over it an a day or two and love you again, without a blackberry.

it is employers, not parents

[SuperBanana]

I wouldn't point the finger at the email gadgets per se. It seems more likely that nanny-state lazy parenting is to blame.

Or maybe, just maybe, it is businesses and corporations that think a salary is an excuse to reach into our entire lives.

Employers now expect to be able to control who we work for after we're laid off, fired, or quit. They expect to control who we work for once we leave the premises. Many expect to have a cell phone number to reach us at, at a bare minimum, if there's an "emergency."

Used to be that if you worked for Joe's Widgets and Joe wasn't treating you right, and Dave's Dodads offered you a better wage- fuck Joe and the horse he rode in on, you said "Sorry Joe" and went to work for Dave. Non-compete agreement? In a capitalist economy in a representative government? What the fuck? Back in the 50's, if you tried to get someone to sign a non-compete agreement telling them they couldn't work for a competitor for a year, that person would have walked right out the door. Used to be you could talk about your kids and it impressed your boss that you were a family man- not that it made your boss think, "shit, that means he'll be staying home for runny noses and wanting time off for their soccer games."

Used to be if a client said "hey, I know it's 10PM there, but I need this answered now" and someone would say, "I'm sorry, we do not conduct business this late." Now it's "sure, let me call Jane." Used to be that companies paid you for your talents, not that you were put on the planet for your employer and given a salary as a courtesy.

I had an employer call me once while I was asleep. I made it very clear I HAD in fact been asleep; I didn't need to say anything more than "I was asleep when you called." Didn't happen again. You gotta draw lines. If you don't, corporations will just continue eating into your life. Push back to the extent you think you have the power to do so, even if it's slight- just like they chipped away. Update your resume and start sending it out again. Network. When you interview, pay close attention to the kind of business, and try to get the precise commitment nailed down without looking too inflexible.

Go for a position where you can demonstrate a well-above-average capacity so that your boss -doesn't- complain when you didn't answer the phone last night, or comes to your defense when the exec's secretary bitches that you weren't fast enough fixing that email account. "That was Joe. We had a major emergency this morning, which he handled very well, but he wasn't able to get to that email account until after he was done. Joe is a very qualified employee who does top-notch work at an agreeable salary" is a powerful response to "Hey, who was responsible for my secretary not having email for 2 hours?" I wish more managers would realize that's the better response compared to hanging the employee out to dry and promising to "speak to them" about it.

I've found so many people misunderstand why execs mention problems they hear about. Half the time a complaint isn't actually a serious complaint, but a probe to see if this minor bump in the road is indicative of larger problems- and hence if your manager values you and comes to your defense, or hangs you out to dry. Sometimes if your manager really values you, coming up on upper management's radar might not be a bad thing. Like, maybe the next comment is, "glad to hear he's an asset, make sure his next performance report crosses my desk and I'll see about his compensation. I want to keep him." Or "hmm, so he does great work, eh? Would he be qualified for (insert next rung on The Ladder) over in Department X? We need a good person for that."

Re:That's why they call it the Crackberry.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Nothing says "I don't really love you", like abandoning you time with the kids for a quick message to the marketing department.

I hate the bogus "trend" stories

[superdude72]

God, I hate these obnoxious "trend" stories in the Wall Steet Journal and the New York Times. They're always designed to inflate the reader's ego. Some evergreen "trends": it' getting harder to get into the right preschool, it's hard to get into the right co-op in Manhattan, $100,000 weddings are becoming the norm, prenatal preparation for the SAT is becoming the norm, etc. etc. You're supposed to develop some sort of tribal identity around these problems.

So here we have the Blackberry. Ooh, ooh, that's me! I have a Blackberry! I have a Blackberry and I live in New York! I'm busy and important too!

But what's the real news here? People who place a high priority on their work have trouble balancing work with family. Big frickin' deal. What's the evidence that a generation of "Blackberry orphans" is emerging? Zero. It's all anecdotal--designed to make you feel like you must be important because you have a Blackberry. I suppose it's also there so the reporter can let it slip that he knows the creator of Entourage.

What really galls me is that someone got paid to write this shit. It's so, so easy. Make up a trend, call your friends for some quotes, get a quote from one "expert" from your Rolodex. It's like this:

Trend: Farting in elevators
Quote 1: I was in an elevator when someone farted once.
Quote 2: Me too!
Expert: We're seeing a lot of people farting in elevators as Mexican food has become chic in upscale, Manhattan neighborhoods.
Quote 3: Yeah, farting in elevators is definitely a trend I've been noticing.

With any luck, if you apply this formula, you'll done with your article by lunchtime. Bad reporter! Go out and find some real news. There are millions of people who would kill to be a reporter at the Wall Street Journal (disgruntled journalism major, here) so go out and earn your place at this respected newspaper! Do your damn job, and stop phoning it in!

Re:That's why they call it the Crackberry.

[DragonWriter]

I actually had a boss who told me that I didn't love the company if I pursued a personal life during my off hours.

I actually had a boss who told employees that, since we were in salaried, exempt positions, we didn't actually have "off hours", just time that we happened to be away from the office.

Re:That's why they call it the Crackberry.

[cayenne8]

"But ostensibly "normal" family relationships? What a screwed up culture that places this in the spectrum of accepable behaviors."

THANK YOU!! I was thinking the same thing. When I was growing up....it was the parents that set the rules....they were the masters and the child obeyed...

Don't get me wrong...my parents listened to me....often they let me have my way on some things. But, I did not lay down the rules. When push came to shove...Mom and Dad were the final say, no arguments at that point.

It sounds like in this article...the kids are ruling the roost. I think this lack of parenting authority may be causing a lot of the problems we see with youth in society today. Parents by and large just don't seem to have a firm handle on their kids today.