On Screen Time, like with so many parenting conundrums, theres no right answer, but there’s a whole world of others parents who will tell you that you’re doing it wrong. We need better guidance to help us navigate through these issues, and that’s why I’m thankful for the work being done by Dr Jacqueline Nesi in her excellent newsletter Techno Sapiens. I’ve found it an essential resource to help me understand more about the challenges I face as a parent today, enabling me to make decisions based on data, not fear, and to enable me to prepare for what comes next, as my kids get older and mobile phones and social media move into the frame.

Key Timings:

Introduction to Jackie Nesi and Parental Tech Fears (00:00-02:18)

Jackie discusses parents' concerns about technology and screen time, with Kevin reflecting on her journey from academia to writing.

Screen Time and Childhood Development (02:18-06:01)

Delving into the role of technology in children's lives, discussing the impact of various screen activities and guidelines for young children.

Influence of Parental Tech Habits (06:01-10:48)

Conversation about how parents' technology use affects children, including the concept of 'technoference' and co-viewing as family bonding.

Managing Screen Time and Discipline (10:48-16:18)

Jackie talks about setting screen time rules, consistency in parenting, and alternatives to screen activities.

Parenting Teenagers in a Digital World (16:18-23:25)

Strategies for disciplining teenagers around technology and considerations for when to give children phones.

Closing Thoughts on Balanced Digital Parenting (23:25-32:05)

Concluding advice on navigating the balance between technology's risks and benefits in parenting.

You can sign up for Techno Sapiens here.

Welcome to the fourth episode of The New Fatherhood podcast. For those who’ve been around these parts for a while, you may remember me talking with writer Oliver Burkeman back in 2021 (I told you some of these recordings are from a while back.) Thanks to the wonders of modern technology (and Max’s phenomenal engineering skills) we’ve been able to take that old conversation and lovingly prepare it for your earholes. I’ve made significant updates to the essay to include reflections on the two years I’ve spent pondering the topics raised in Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks.

Key Quotes:

“We tend to over-focus on instrumentalising time, and trying to use time well can become so all-encompassing that we're judging the value of life exclusively by future accomplishments, future profits or future benefits. This is totally universal, but in the context of parenting—drawing partly on a piece Adam Gopnik wrote for The New Yorker—is the idea of how it's very easy as a parent to fall into this society-reinforced notion that the point of parenting is to like produce successful older kids and adults, and that the point of childhood is to become a successful adult. And that drains childhood, and the experience of being the parent, to a kind of intrinsic benefit.

“I remember when our son was born, a lot of the advice that you get from these experts is that it’s very bad to train your child to fall asleep on you, or to need you in the bed. But there's no consideration of whether the experience of falling asleep together—for you, and the child—has any value at all. That, in the moment, it could be a good way to spend some months of your life.”

“I am susceptible to finding YouTube videos made by terrifyingly accomplished American moms: with the best system of storage for their craft supplies, and an unlimited list of exciting ideas for a rainy Sunday afternoon. That’s when I do find myself prone to that “oh goodness we should have a setup like that... We should have a limitless number of supplies, including food colourings, and perfect labels, and apparently children who are willing to put things back in the right drawers.” And so that's been interesting to me, because it obviously shows that your sense self worth is suddenly more at stake when other people are depending on it."

“The problem is not planning. The problem is what you take plans to be. In the book I quote Joseph Goldstein: “we forget that a plan is just a thought.” It’s how you'd like the future to unfold. But the thing we try to do with planning is to reach out into the future from the present, and control it, and know that it's going to turn out a certain way. And that's where we get into trouble, because we don't have that control, and we're constantly experiencing this anxious gear crunching between reality and expectation.”

Audio production by Max McCabe. Branding by Selman Design. Survey by Sprig. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts: Apple, Spotify Google, Overcast, Pocket Casts or Amazon Music. Purchase Four Thousand Weeks here: https://geni.us/9inb7

Back once again with the renegade podcast. P for Papa with the ill behaviour.

Feeling tired? Of course you are. If you’re reading this, chances are you are on the hook for the survival, relentless feeding, cognitive development and creation of a loving environment for at least one small child. And it doesn’t let up. Becoming a parent means signing up for half a decade—at least—of being completely exhausted. That’s the deal. You exchange the golden trifecta of guaranteed sleep, disposable income and free time for cuddles, cuteness, and carrying on the human race—or at least the part of it that contains your own genes.

The pressures of work, combined with the relentless requests of a tiny child and society's expectations of us being able to navigate this all with ease, put parents at increased levels of strain that they end up taking out on each other and their kids. I wanted to dive further into this topic and better understand where burnout and parenting overlap. So I contacted one of the world’s leading experts on the subject: Brad Stulberg, author of The Practice of Groundedness, Peak Performance and his recent book Master of Change, released earlier this month.

Branding and illustration by Selman Design. Audio production by Max McCabe. Survey by Sprig.