Hovering parents - are cellphones a major cause in the change in childrearing?

[Tastes of Chocolate]

There have been lots of threads where people lament the loss of a carefree childhood. Being able to ride your bike all day and only come home at dark, or having a 14yr old riding mass transit without Child Services being called.

I started wondering about the role of cellphones in this. Cellphones have changed how we feel about being in or out of touch. Family vacations used to involve packing everyone in the car, asking the neighbors to water the plants, and heading out for a week or 2, with the only contact with friends and family being a postcard send from Mount Rushmore, that probably got there after you got home. Now, the folks back home can call you any time, any where. While on vacation, you might send out a text message lamenting the long lines at your favorite amusement park.

So has this affected the freedoms that people give their kids? It used to be that parents and kids were out of contact all day, at least partially because there just wasn't a good way to be IN contact. Has the ability to constantly in contact created a spiral of connectedness? I CAN reach my kid all the time, so I EXPECT to be in contact more, and because I expect to be in contact more, I worry over not being in contact.

[gurujulp]

I wouldn't call myself a hovering parent, and I have participated in at least a couple of those threads recently, but...

Yes.

[Moonlitherial]

I'm going to ring in on the opposite side. I think the ability for my kids to contact me freely let me give them more freedom knowing they could contact me if they needed to. FWIW my kids were pretty free range - traveling by bus and train on their own from the age of 12 in order to travel the 80ish kms between their father and I.

In order for this to work however I had to be confident that when an issue arose they would contact me. Free range is all about small steps and earned responsibility in my mind.

[Chronos]

I'm not seeing it. It seems to me that parents should be willing to give their kids more freedom in the age of cell phones, not less, because they know that if something goes wrong, the kid can always call home for help.

[begbert2]

Based on the replies so far, I will advance the thesis that, whether you are by nature a hovering parent or a free-ranger, cell phones exascerbate your condition.

[TriPolar]

I don't know if cell phone contact is the same as hovering. If it leads to giving kids more freedom it may not be so bad. I think the hovering problem is being with the child all the time and robbing him/her of the opportunity to be self reliant.

[Algher]

Based on the replies so far, I will advance the thesis that, whether you are by nature a hovering parent or a free-ranger, cell phones exacerbate your condition.

Agreed. I am a free-ranger, and having a phone makes it easier for me to let my teenager go roaming. Knowing that he has a phone (and for that matter a Visa card) for emergencies means that I don't worry about him making his way home.

That said, on a trip he took recently I DID wonder where my daily text was!

[Indistinguishable]

I don't know exactly what the effects are, but I'm sure that cellphones have caused major changes of some sort or another in childrearing, just as they naturally have in many other aspects of life. It's just not clear whether the result should be characterized as pro-"hovering", anti-"hovering", or something else altogether.

[Captain Midnight]

I was an early 1980's teen, back then no one had mobile phones and I did not volunteer my friend's phone number to my parents. I remember in high school being let out early because of an ice storm, with me driving to my friend's house to hang out. My friend lived on the other side of town. My mother kept calling my friend looking for me, with him telling her that I wasn't there. She kept calling back several times until I answered the phone.

[villa]

My 10 year old rides Amtrak unaccompanied (but supervised by the company) from Philly to DC and back to visit me. Absent cell phones, I am pretty certain my ex-wife wouldn't allow that.

The phone can cut both ways - its the parent who determines which way.