No, I’m not referring to parents whacking their children with their iPhones. I’m talking about the new ways in which parents can now keep their kids distracted, entertained, and otherwise occupied, in other words, out of their parents’ hair. Parental expediency has truly reached new heights thanks to the iPhone and its army of clever app developers.
Let’s be realistic. Parents have done the expedient thing with their children to make being a parent easier for as long as humans have roamed the earth. Back when we had just become Homo Erectus, caveparents gave their cavekids a stick or bone to keep them occupied. As our species has evolved, so has the sophistication of parents’ strategies. There were dolls and toys of increasingly mind-absorbing design. With the discovery of electricity, a new era of parent expediency emerged. Dolls could now walk and talk. Toys moved, played sounds, and lit up. The radio helped, though without the visual stimulation it just couldn’t hold children captive for that long.
