Legal Commentary

Thanks to Dan and the  other permanent bloggers on PrafwsBlawg for having me back. Recently, I have been studying the ways in which the law enforces Intensive Parenting. In an article titled Over-Parenting my co-author Zvi Triger and I show that parenting has changed over the last two decades. The contemporary parent is is on a constant quest to obtain updated knowledge of best child rearing practices and use this information actively to cultivate her child and monitor all aspects of the child?s life.  In the article we highlight the drawbacks of Intensive Parenting and caution against its incroporation into the law.

Yet, Intensive Parenting is not merely about social norms. The intensive parent uses a vast array of technologies to cultivate, monitor and remain informed. Technology companies cater to the norms of Intensive Parenting and reinforces them by producing technologies that facilitate Intensive Parenting.

This fall, Apple received a patent for a technology that enables parents to control the text messages their children send and receive. Parents can use the technology in different ways. One way is  to prevent children  from sending or receiving objectionable text messages. But, control can take more subtle forms. For example, the patent abstract states the technology could require that a child learning Spanish will text a certain number of Spanish words per day. 

As we know, children today text hundreds of messages a day. It seems, in fact, that texting has at least partly replaced conversations. In  generations that preceeded texting, parents did not filter their children's conversations from objectionable messages nor could they enforce the practice of Spanish away from the  class or home.  Yet, parents driven by Intensive Parenting norms to regulate and monitor every aspect of their child's life can now control their children's social conversations away from home.

I am often asked - so what does the law have to do with Intensive Parenting? In our article, we show some ways in which the law purposefully endorses and enforces intensive parenting norms. Here, however, we have an unexpected and unintentional enforcer of Intensive Parenting - The Patent Office. The Patent Office has awarded Apple a patent and through this action indirectly enforced Intensive Parenting.

How does the award of a patent to a parental texting control technology enforce  Intensive Parenting? First, the goal of awarding a patent is to encourage innovation that promotes progress. In this instance, the award of a patent encourages innovation in parental control technologies. Secondly, although the patent system does not employ moral criteria in deciding which inventions warrant a patent, it does have an expressive value. For many in the general public, the grant of a patent endorses an invention as a good and useful invention. Hence. by granting a patent to an invention that lets parents control an important part of their children's social life, the patent system effectively promotes intensive parenting norms.