A new ingredient can be added to the complex parenting equation: computer skills. As many adults become afflicted by technology, this is not the case with children. One third of parents report that their child feels more comfortable using the computer than they, themselves, do (http://www.lexmark.com/press/96_press/12-04-96.html). This increases to forty-four percent with parents aged fifty years or older. The comfort the younger generations have with computers has made children more independent of their parents in their exploration of the world (Papert, 1996). “Children driven by instincts for independent action and frustrated by dependency in learning are seizing with passion the key to freedom in learning. Parents can fight it or join it” (Papert, 1996, p. 5). Those who fight it are the authoritarian parents, controlling or even closing their children’s online opportunities for independent learning. Those who stifle it are the passive parents, who do not resourcefully engage in their child’s learning. Papert identifies a type of passive parent, what he named the “cyberostrich” (p.5). The cyberostrich is the parent who puts “his/her head in the sand in denial of the looming changes in the learning environment” (p.5). Nevertheless, an ideal parenting style is to take the authoritative middle road, and, as Papert put it, “join it.”
Parents who communicate an authoritative approach to online parenting empower their children to become more responsible, aware, and autonomous online. Seventy-two percent of parents agree that using a personal computer has helped their children become more creative, and almost half say their children would not do as well in school if they didn’t own one (http://www.lexmark.com/press/96_press/12-04-96.html). There are many opportunities for children to unleash their imagination on the computer. The internet alone broadens children’s interests, exposes them to foreign ideas and perspectives, allows them to communicate to remote places, and ameliorates domestic purposes (family rituals, routines, and celebrations) (http://homenet.andrew.cmu.edu/progress).
The Cyber-Struggle
Between Parents and Children by Julie Carvey
| Cyber-struggle Opening Page | The Instinct to Protect Our Young | Balancing Parental Control |
| Freeing the Computer Savvy Cyber-Children | Building Family Cyber-Values | Sources Cited |
From the
Flinstones to the Jetsons:
How Technology is Sprocketing the American Family into the New
Millennium
| PROJECT HOME PAGE | Child-Parent Dynamics in the CyberAge by Michael Johnson |
| Gender Roles in Cyberspace by Leslie Simon | Computer and Internet
Demographics by Jason Stewart |
This project was produced for Psy 380, Social Psychology of Cyberspace, Spring 1999, at Miami University. All graphics in these pages are used with permission or under fair use guidelines, are in the public domain, or were created by the authors. Last revised: . This document has been accessed times since 1 May 1999. Comments & Questions to R. Sherman
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