I have seen a shift in the balance of power happening in my family. My dad has a little knowledge on technology since he used to fix computers however, my mom does not. The closest that she has ever used for technology is her phone by texting or calling me. This reminds me of Anderson’s statement that “(49%) of parents say they most often will use text messaging when they need to get in touch with their child quickly, while 41% most often call their child on the phone” (16). This actually happened a couple times when I was in high school, my mom was downstairs and the kids were upstairs. My mom couldn’t yell loud enough for my siblings to hear her, so she texted me first and then called all of my siblings to see if someone would answer the phone to grab her a blanket. But yes, this is one of the normal balance of parent-child relationship. However that shift has changed once all of my siblings and I went to college.
My mom left her old work that did not require technology or using emails on the daily. Now her new job has made her realize that she needs to learn more about technology. I had recently helped her create an email and teach her how to access her email on phone and computer. This experience took me by surprise since I became frustrated with my mom since I had to try to break-down the things that I found simple and having to translate all of that in Hmong was a mess but we did it. As stressful as it was, it was interesting for me to see how much of a balance in power this was for me since my mom is someone in my culture that I had to listen to for advice and guidance but now I’m the one that is leading her on how to use an email. At one point my little sister that is eight-years-old was trying to teach my mom how to use the iPad to login to her email. This made me think of Anderson’s point about parents being “45 and older” (8) and allowing their children to use their digital devices for a longer period of time. I noticed that with my younger sister, she is surrounded by electronics and my parents are okay with it, however they were really strict with me using the computer to talk to my friends online.
This reminded me of I noticed that this made my dad feel uncomfortable since he was not there with me while I was re-teaching my mom the basic steps to creating and accessing her email. He was so used to being the man of the house and being the person that people call on for help when the internet is down or when my computer is broken. Now he is living like a free man that has no worries about teaching his kids and goes on Facebook more than me to find videos or memes. I sometimes catch myself trying to restrict my dad from using his Facebook account when I need to talk to him about something serious and he gets distracted. Then it makes me think of being a part of the 65% reports that punishes their teens by taking away their phones (Anderson, 2016). The balance of power in parent-child relationships has changed in my family but only due to technology there is a power change.I think that families should embrace the power shift at a certain point, because sometimes parents are afraid to admit that they need help.
References
Anderson, M. (2016, January 7). “Parents, Teens and Digital Monitoring”. Pew Research Center
Houa Lee Blog 