Growing Up Wireless: Being a Parent and Being a Child in the Age of Mobile Communication

Abstract

This chapter illustrates the role of the mobile phone in the rise of new cultural models of parenting. According to a phenomenological theoretical approach to culture and everyday life, the author argues that the relationship between technologies, culture, and society should be conceived as a mutual construction. As cultural artefacts, mobile communication technologies both are domesticated by people into their cultural ways of living and create new ones. How are mobile phones domesticated by already existing cultural models of parenting? How does the introduction of the mobile phone affect family life and intergenerational relationships? How does mobile contact contribute in the construction of new cultural models of “being a parent” and “being a child”? Analysing new social phenomena such as “hyper-parenting” and the “dialogic use” of mobile phones, the author argues upon the role of mobile communication technologies in articulating the paradoxical nature of the contemporary cultural model of family education.