Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My wife, “Nancy,” and I are at odds over something that is the result of pure paranoia on her part.
She wants to put AirTags on our kids (who are 9 and 11) without their knowledge. I think kids today are monitored to the point of obsession. I am concerned that when the kids find out about this—and I am convinced they will—they will see it as a personal violation and think we don’t trust them. When I raised this with Nancy and asked her how she would have felt if this technology had existed when we were that age and learned her parents had done this to her, her reply was, “It was different back then.” I think what she wants to do is out of line. Am I right in this?
—They’re Kids, Not Wildlife in a Study
Dear They’re Kids,
I have to agree with you. It’s universally understood by child development professionals that as children get older, they need to be given more responsibility and autonomy. This can come with some of the trappings of modern technology, if it makes parents feel better. (Though plenty of experts believe we are going overboard there—and potentially doing more harm than good.) Smart watches and AirTags are two types of devices frequently deployed by parents so they can have peace of mind while their kids roam. But if you use these tools, you have to tell the kids about it. Why? Because if you are asking your children to be trustworthy members of the family, you must be trusting and trustworthy yourself. If you are asking your children to be transparent with you, then you must model transparency. (See the book Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen for examples of this kind of parenting.) We do our kids—especially our tweens and teens—a disservice when we think of parenting as rules and surveillance versus guidance and mentorship.
What does your wife think are the benefits of keeping the AirTags a secret? My concern is that she views it as an opportunity to catch them doing something wrong—and supposedly punish them for it. Is that the relationship she wants to have with her kids? Conversely, telling them about the AirTags invites them into the conversation, where you can set ground rules together for their movements around town. Perhaps your wife’s rationale is that she wants her kids to still be able to feel a sense of autonomy, adventure, and privacy that previous generations enjoyed. The only problem? It would be fictional. In my opinion, the only thing worse than a lack of privacy is finding out the privacy you thought you had was a sham.
—Allison
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