Are we in danger of breeding battery children?
Childhood has well and truly come into the 21st century with the invention of the nu.mate. Revealed to the world this week and on sale from March, this device takes the form of a GPS tracker contained within a digital watch that allows you to track your child’s movements anywhere they go and follow them on a web site. More sinisterly, the watch cannot be removed once put on by the parent. If it is removed, either by an abductor or, more likely, by the child itself, an immediate alarm is sent out to the GPS tracker and passed to the parent.
Thankfully I don’t seem to be alone in finding this a little sinister. The manufacturers claim that it is for 3-12 year olds. Well I wouldn’t let a three year old out on their own, if only because they can barely read and can’t cross the road safely. By twelve, I would expect my daughter to be able to look after herself when out over the park, shopping or at friends and not to expect me to find her if she got lost. In between, surely a parent needs to help a child gain knowledge and confidence, whilst giving them opportunities to increase their independence.
This gadget seems to be a sinister way to stalk your own child. In our own childhood, most of us didn’t follow every rule and instruction of our parents and what they didn’t know didn’t, on the whole, hurt them (or us). Tagging your own child like a convict seems controlling to say the least, if not close to child abuse. The trust between a child and parent needs to be clear and absolute, not limited and conditional. What if the alarm does go off, or your child strays outside the direct route to their friend’s house? Are the police going to be called each time a child makes an impromptu detour to the sweet shop or removes the strap because he finds it itchy, sweaty or just plain insulting? And if not, the whole device simply becomes like Big Brother, but without the house and the tasks.
When my daughter was born, I promised myself that I would allow her every freedom that I could. Freedom to dress as she wanted, go where she wanted, study as she wanted – with only her health and the law as constraints. But of course early promises don’t always work out that way in real life. And although my now 12 year old chose to become a vegetarian, decided which secondary school to go to and has her own individual dress sense, it doesn’t stop me wanting to run her life just a little – either because I think I can stop her making mistakes (I can’t, of course) or because I worry.
All decent parents worry to some extent, mainly about their children’s safety. With all the stories in the media, it is easy to think that our children are under threat, when the facts are quite different. I found out I was pregnant the same week as the Dunblane massacre and the terrible attack on Lisa Potts and the children in her care at a Wolverhampton nursery took place only a few weeks before Harriet was born. In August 2002, whilst Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were missing in Soham, my friend and I lost Harriet and her schoolfriend Megan at Thorpe Park. For the longest 30 minutes of my life, I learned the meaning of blood running cold.
The first time she walked to school on her own, I had to stop myself calling the school to check if she had arrived. She now scuba dives – a sport not without its danger – and loves other adventurous activities. I know, however hard I find it, that I have to let her be herself.
The makers of this device say that it will give children their freedom. It won’t, it will tie them to the apron strings for a far longer period of time and stop them developing. Never mind feral, we are in danger of breeding battery children. Let them be free-range and only kept inside to save them from the foxes.
Related posts:
- Your child is not yours
- Now will you leave our children in peace?
- Hey! Minister! Leave them kids alone!
Comments
13 January 2009, 4:17 pm
Hear, hear! This watch idea sounds incredibly selfish – putting the desire of parents to know their kids are safe over what’s best for the children themselves.
I’ve many of the same feelings as you about my kids and this isn’t the right way to go at all.
The real risk here is parents feeling emotionally blackmailed into tracking their kids: “what if something happened and you could have done something about it.”
13 January 2009, 5:03 pm
I am probably one of the over anxious parents who could fall prey to this device – but I won’t. To do so would be to rob my daughter of her freedom, which I value so much for myself.
If the Government announced that it was going to stick one of these tracker things on each one of us so nobody would ever go missing, we would be up in arms about it. Why would we do it to our children?
I can’t guarantee she’s going to be safe 24/7, although we can have certain rules and practices to try to make sure that she doesn’t put herself into danger. She also has to develop her own judgements about what is dangerous and what is not.
I think we rely too much on technology and not enough on good old fashioned being together as families these days – and devices like this don’t help.
13 January 2009, 6:16 pm
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14 January 2009, 9:02 am
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