Mom has something to say to parents who are 'always on their phones'
Paige Connell was at her son’s taekwondo practice when she noticed that most of the moms in the room were distracted on their phones. Herself included.
Before you judge, hear Connell out.
“When a Dad is on his phone, you assume that he’s answering an email, you assume that he’s reading an important document — you assume that he’s doing something good with his time,” Connell, 34, tells TODAY.com. “When a woman is on her phone, suddenly there’s a negative connotation. She’s scrolling social media and texting her friends.”
Connell, who lives outside Boston with four kids under the age of 7, is a full-time operations manager. She also works as a content creator shedding light on the mental load of motherhood.
“I have seen a lot of commentary about how parents are always on their phones… They’re just too busy on their phone, and why can’t they just take a break and look up?” Connell, 34, began a recent TikTok video.
“I want to provide a slightly different perspective here, because I think the average parent is asked to do a lot,” she continued. “The majority of parents in our country are working parents. So when they’re at Taekwondo practice at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon, they’re probably still on the clock.”
Connell also notes that in past generations, parents would drop off their kids off and beeline to their car.
“We’re being asked not only to do more — be at every practice, be at every game, volunteer, work full-time, pick up the kids from the bus stop. We’re also being asked to be fully present for all of it, which is impossible,” she says.
Connell was inundated with comments:
“The idea what we have to be present every single second of our child’s life is just INSANE. Especially coming from the ‘go outside and don’t come back until dark’ generation.”
“My parents never drove me to a single activity, never mind sit and watch a practice in rapt attention.”
“This! If I’m on the phone with my kids, I’m either literally on the clock working, or doing the hundred other things I need to do to keep the family running — ordering groceries, responding to teacher emails, scheduling appointments, etc. It’s multitasking out of sheer necessity, not neglecting your kids.”
“Thank you for this! I feel guilty for sometimes being on my phone around my kids.”
“THIS. I had a dude bug me about being on my phone at the playground … when I let him know that I was running payroll suddenly he didn’t care.”
Connell says moms should give themselves grace if they need a few minutes to mindlessly scroll on Instagram while their kid is playing in a sandbox.
“This is the point of bringing your kids to the playground, and this is the point of bringing your kids to sports,” she tells TODAY.com. “They are supposed to be finding independence and life outside of us. That means in those moments, that’s our time — and it doesn’t always have to be productive.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
