Overview

Whether members of the family are headed to school or work, smartphones accompany family members throughout the day. The growing sophistication of mobile communication has unleashed a proliferation of apps, channels, and platforms that link parents to their children and the key institutions in their lives. While parents may feel empowered by their ability to provide their children assistance with a click on their smartphone, they may also feel pressured and overwhelmed by this need to always be on call for their children. This book focuses on the phenomenon of transcendent parenting, where parents actively use technology to go beyond traditional, physical practices of parenting. In drawing on the experiences of intensely digitally-connected families in Singapore to tell a global story, Sun Sun Lim argues how transcendent parenting can embody and convey, intentionally or not, the parenting priorities in these households. Chapters outline how parents exploit mobile connectivity to transcend the physical distance between themselves and their children, the online and offline social interaction environments, and the timelessness of seemingly ceaseless parenting. Transcendent Parenting further explores how mobile communication allows parents to be more involved than ever in their children's lives, leaving readers to question whether or not parents have become too involved as a result. With its clear discussions of the effects of transcendent parenting on parents' wellbeing and children's personal development, Transcendent Parenting will appeal to a broad audience of readers, from scholars, educators and policy makers to parents and young people across the globe.

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9780190088996

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Reviews

As the world hurtles ever further into an era of perpetual contact with media, Lim offers a fluent and well-informed analysis of the multiple effects of mobile technology on parent-child relationships. She dexterously examines a rich array of parent-child realities across varying social classes and cultures. -- James E. Katz, Ph.D, Boston University Sun Sun Lim's social analysis is robust, insightful, and important for anyone studying any field related to mobile communication. -- Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science With richly detailed stories of parental concerns about mobile media and the strategies they embrace to address them, this volume will be of great interest to parents, educators, and everyone who cares about children and contemporary family life in a digital age. -- Lynn Schofield Clark, Ph.D, University of Denver

Author Information

Sun Sun Lim is Head of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. A professor of communication and technology, she has studied the relationship between technology and society for over 15 years. She has published extensively on technology domestication by young people and families in China, Indonesia, Korea, Singapore and Vietnam. She is a Nominated Member of the 13th Parliament of Singapore.

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