My Connection to Chapter 6 - Networked Families

I chose to read Chapter 6 from Networked Part 2 for my piece of the Jigsaw. Chapter 6 is called Networked Families and that really grabbed my attention. My family has been my entire world as a stay at home for the last 20 years. Communication in any relationship can be challenging, but my husband has always traveled with his job as a pilot, even before we were married with children. This adds some extra challenges when the option of communicating face to face is simply not an option. We have gone from being networked via landline phone calls and emails to cell phone calls and then to FaceTime calls and text messages. My husband is not a fan of FaceTime and I can't say it's my favorite form of communication either, but my son, who is in college, likes to call me on FaceTime. If a teenage boy contacts his mom in any fashion...she answers!

This chapter takes a look at how families have been changing. Fewer people are getting married and more people are in partnerships and living together but not getting married in 2007 than they were in 1970. People are starting families later in life and they are having smaller families. More people are not having children at all for one reason or another. Table 6.1 made me a little nostalgic for the days of running around barefoot until the streetlights came on. The table compares life in the 1950s to 1960s to life in the 2000s to 2010s. The items that stood out the most to me were how mom contacts the kids: yell out the window compared to calling the child’s cell phone and how to contact a spouse at work. I would never think about calling my husband at work, even 30 years ago unless it was a major emergency. As a little side note here, when I went into labor with our oldest son, my husband was at work. We did have cell phones at that time, but it was the middle of the night and he had it turned off. I had no idea how to contact the company so they could let him know I was going to the hospital! Luckily, a friend of ours is a pilot for the same company and he was able to help me out. In contrast, today I have already exchanged eight text messages with him and it’s only 10:00AM. Don’t worry, he doesn’t text and fly, but there is plenty of time in a pilot’s day when he is just sitting around waiting for passengers.

Networked Families touched on how often families eat dinner together. I was surprised that a survey in 2008 showed 93% of families eat dinner together at least a few times each week. In my family, I eat dinner when it’s ready! If you’re home, you can eat then also. If not, you can eat when you do get home and I will still sit with you and chat about your day. This old lady just can’t stand eating dinner at 8:00 after sports practice! I suppose technically, the survey doesn’t say that dinner is eaten at the table at home. Dinner could mean eating from the drive-thru bag in the car between school and practice.

Television with today’s networked family is not as prevalent as it was a generation ago. Although we love to find a series we can binge as a family, the only real television we watch together is live sporting events and even then it’s not uncommon for everyone to have a device in their hand in addition to watching the tv.

Families are more connected now than they were twenty or thirty years ago. Even though families may be more spread out and constantly on the go, the technology we have at our fingertips makes it easy for quick check-ins throughout the day. I can remember calling my grandparents every Sunday night and giving them the updates of the week. It was usually about a 15 minute call and that was it for the week. If we talked to the grandparents any other time than Sunday night, something bad must have been happening. Now, the grandparents get daily updates on the grandkids complete with photos or a livestream! It helps the generations have a closer relationship even though the distance is still far apart.



References

Lee Rainie, & Barry Wellman. (2012). Networked : The New Social Operating System. The MIT Press.