Culture

The (parent.thesis) blog is coming to you this week from the lakeside woods of Northern Michigan. Family vacations used to mean getting away to what felt like an alternate universe, a place that seemed to materialize only in the summer, and disappeared from consciousness the rest of the year. We used to feel cut off from the rest of the world up here. There was no TV, and if we didn't get the newspaper we could miss out on a whole week of news.

But now the online world has bridged these two universes. I checked the upcoming week's vacation weather from home, before we left. Using the Microsoft Virtual Earth map on Weather.com, I zoomed in down to the level where I could see my family's house. I know we've probably all done search on own houses at some point, but to see the vacation house from home gave me a true though-the-looking-glass-feeling.

We're still not exactly high tech up here. We don't have an internet connection in the house, but we are allowed to connect to the house next door's network. So I am sitting in the woods, on a plastic chair, blogging on my laptop. This experience crystallizes the best and worst of remote connection for me. … Read more

New York Times workplace trendspotter Lisa Belkin writes today about the culture clashes arising now that four generations are in the workplace at one time. The World War II generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y have very different values and expectations that are not always compatible co-existing in the workplace. Think belly rings clashing with Brooks Brothers, or flex-time worship versus yuppie ladder climbing.

Belkin writes about programs designed to translate workplace standards and communication styles across these boundaries: "Summer is the season of culture shock in the working world, when the old guard comes face to face with a next wave of newcomers, and the result is something like lost tribes encountering explorers for the first time."

This trend story feels a little pat and overgeneralized, but Belkin's article made me smile because I had just been thinking about what it means to have four generations online. In this case, the tables are turned with the younger generations as the experts who have grown up with online technology as their native culture, and senior family members more or less along for the ride. In our family, the grandparents are online, which is a good thing, but I have run into my own case of culture shock when my father reads my blogs. … Read more

MySpace has quadrupled its estimated number of registered sex offenders posting profiles on the site, from its May estimate of 7,000 to a current tally of 29,000. The pages of identified offenders have been deleted. What does this news mean for parents? How do we assess risk and keep it in perspective, and what best practices should be implemented on family, corporate and societal levels to keep kids safe?… Read more

Now I have heard everything. On top of all the duties that moms are supposed to do, some are now babysitting their kids' Webkinz online pets while the children are away at summer camp.

In the world of overintensive parenting and martyred moms, can we all agree that spending a half hour to an hour a day caring for pretend critters is a good place to draw the line at ridiculous demands that are made of our time? (Of course there is no mention of dads being asked to take over this ridiculous "duty.")

Webkinz never die but … Read more

My grandparents lived very long lives. My mother's father was born in 1893, grew up on a sheep ranch in Australia, fought for the British in World War I, suffered numerous life-threatening calamities and collisions as a semi-professional adventurer, and lived 86 years. My father's parents both lived to the age of 96. And my mother's mother lived to be more than 100 years old. She was a professional musician who played in the big bands, backing movies like Abbott and Costello's Here Come the Co-eds and played most famously in Phil Spitalny's Hour of Charm All Girl Orchestra, chronicled in the book Swing Shift. (Sadly that book was written after the memories of most of the sources had begun to degrade.)… Read more

When you think of a parenting and technology blog, you might expect lots of posts about new gadgets for kids. But I have found that the biggest impact that technology has had on my "parenting" life isn't in my relationship with my child, it's in my identity as a mother. And rather than being about gadgets, for me technology is primarily about relationships and sharing information.… Read more

Girls and women are under all sorts of pressure to look perfect--and to make it look easy in the process. Duke University identified this new unattainable standard as "effortless perfection."

As individual women, it can be easy to wonder why we fall into the trap of trying to live up to an unattainable standard. It's something we absorb on an almost subconscious level. Deconstructing this month's Redbook magazine cover shows us just how manufactured the images of beauty we see really are.

I didn't think twice about the cover image of country singer and actress Faith Hill when I first saw it. But an untouched original photo obtained by Jezebel shows just how much "digital magic" even a certified star needs to be ready for her close-up. … Read more

A Facebook profile containing a photograph of young men posing with guns has been cited as a factor in a police shooting that killed an 18-year-old robbery suspect last December.

The shooting death of Peyton Strickland during the course of a police raid has been big news in North Carolina but has not been widely reported. Strickland was a suspect in the assault and robbery of a University of North Carolina at Wilmington student whose two Sony PlayStaton 3 machines were stolen.

During the police raid on Strickland's house, a deputy mistook the sound of a battering ram for gunfire and shot through the door, killing the unarmed Strickland.

The Raleigh News & Observer reported this week that the Facebook photos of another suspect posing with two buddies while brandishing a friend's gun collection led the police to expect to encounter heavily armed resistance during the raid. The police were fortified with weapons in anticipation of coming up against AR-15 firearms they had seen in the photograph.… Read more

Among two-parent, Mom and Dad families, most women feel that the "Mom" role means that her brain becomes not only the family's collective memory store, but its search engine as well. Even Google can't answer questions such as:

"Mom, where's Princess Leia's shoe?" (At the bottom of the blue box in the playroom.)

"Honey, are we out of toilet paper?" (Look in the kids' bathroom.)

When are our property taxes due....when is my next dental check-up...what day is the dog's birthday?… Read more