Happy Sunday!

I hope your Sunday is like opening your favorite book for the very first time.

Hiya Reader!

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It has lately come to my attention that people track other people’s whereabouts via phone. Not that I’ve never heard of this, or wasn’t aware of the technology; it just didn’t ever occur to me to track anyone’s movements and thus it came as a surprise that other people do.

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If you and your adult partner are part of this cohort I guess I get it. I guess? But I absolutely don’t have to get it for it to be fine. I also don’t get couples buying the same items of clothing and wearing them in tandem, or why anyone would want to share a bed every single night, so there you go, consider me a confused outlier.

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But when it comes to tracking your children’s movements, I'm confused. Now, let me state that I am a pretty laid back parent. In that my kids never had a curfew, I didn’t pay attention to their grades and homework unless there seemed to be a problem, and I wasn’t too worried about what they were getting up to when I wasn’t around.
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Naive? Perhaps. But I feel strongly that many modern kids are insulated from all risk, and that’s not helping them become self-actualized adults. Which is why I let my very tiny child climb any piece of playground equipment she could find. It’s also why I let my kids talk to strangers; so they could develop a sense of who was safe and who put off a creepy vibe.

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Let me just say that this is no diss track - I’m not here to throw shade on people doing whatever it is they do. I’m just perennially curious about why we do the things we do, particularly when it comes to parenting.

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I happen to think that most kids will do just fine without micromanaging. And if the phone tracking is done with the intent of keeping kids from taking risks, it’s not going to work. Although it might help your kids learn critical thinking as they endeavor to lead the lives they want while throwing you off their track.

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One friend of one of my kids used to give my daughter her phone when she was spending the night with her boyfriend so that her parents didn’t know where she was. The subterfuge involved carefully curated photos and pre-written texts - it was elaborate, and it worked.

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Lying to your parents was so much easier in the 70’s!

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Here’s my question: if your child is somewhere other than where you expect them to be at any given time, does this make them inherently safer? Or just make them feel like Big Brother is real and on their phone? Because it seems to me that, like so much of modern parenting, phone tracking is a solution begging for a problem.

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Technology has (obviously) changed the way we do just about everything. In the case of parenting apps and behaviors, I think it’s become a panacea - we have more info, therefore we believe we’re safer. But maybe we’re just trying, desperately, to maintain control where no control is useful. Or even possible.

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I sometimes amuse my children by telling them stories about my childhood in the dark ages. Their eyes get huge when I explain that in the olden days, if you called someone on the phone and there was no answer you just had to move on with your life. ANd it was common to get no answer! It didn’t immediately occasion visions of death and disaster, it just meant we weren’t home.

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I want to live in a world in which it is okay to not be home. In which I don’t have to text back within five minutes. In which I don’t know where my loved ones are at any moment of the day and it’s okay.

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I fear we’re moving ever closer to implanted microchips. When those arrive we won’t have to choose to track one another, we’ll just know the whereabouts of everyone, all the time. And this does not make me feel safe or relaxed. Hm, maybe it’s time to go analog? Where’s that flip phone?! 😆

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As always, my take is just my take. Think I’m bananas? I’m here to hear it!

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xo, Julia

Recommendation!

Do you ever keep yourself from reading a book, or seeing a show or movie, because it’s so popular? It’s a funny sort of resistance. Looking for a new audiobook, I came across Where the Crawdads Sing. Everyone loves this book!

According to Wikipedia, “it topped The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2019 and The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2020. By February 2022, the book had spent 150 weeks on the best seller list.” Reese Witherspoon's was one of several production companies involved in bringing it to the big screen, where it did pretty well.

So why did I never read it? There was something about it being so popular that made me think it was going to be all fluff. But it suddenly struck me that maybe the populace has better collective taste than I give it credit for.

My recommendation this week is not for this specific book, but for trying things that you’ve judged Not Your Cup of Tea for no particular reason. You can always abandon it if it turns out it’s not for you.

Recently published work

More parenting and more decluttering! Hm, seems like it's time for some new subjects. All suggestions welcome! But honestly, I kind of like both of these.

​Middle School Is Where It All Goes To Hell (Scary Mommy)

​What to do with all your digital photos (Insider)