Boys Catching Up with Girls (Thanks to Cell Phones)

When our oldest son, Davis, was still en utero, we were looking forward to finding out the gender. He was the first grandkid on three sides, so grandparents were poised with credit cards, clamoring to know: pink or blue?

In the weeks leading up to the ultra-sound, I started asking friends with kids: "which one do we want? boy or girl?"

Everyone who had little kids said I wanted a girl. They talk sooner, they potty-train quicker, they're often just easier to manage.

Everyone who had teenagers said I wanted a boy. Hormones, hormones, and more hormones.

My theory has been, though, that girls come back to win as adults. They tend to maintain stronger connection with the parents. But I'm starting to wonder if the explosion of cell phone use in the past ten to fifteen years has changed all that.

When I went off to college, I didn't have a cell phone--no one did. I was always out and I wasn't the greatest at calling home. So my communication pattern settled into a call back home every couple of weeks, maybe once a month.

This has continued into adulthood.

Enter, the cell phone meets the college student experience. And with the cell phone, the advent of the 'helicopter parent.'

The helicopter parent is a fairly recent phenomena whereby the parents are way more involved in daily, sometimes hourly decisions that until the advent of the cell phone were the sole responsibility of the student. They perpetually hover over their adult child, often talking two to five times a day via the cell phone. Hence, helicopter parent.

And so I wonder, going back to my original question, if the disparity between boys and girls in terms of connection and contact with the parents has been shrunk down due to cell phone use. Plenty of my guy students talk to their parents two times a week or more.

We ended up with one boy and two girls. We'll see how it all works out for us. In the mean time, we might need to get on that family cell phone plan. Kelly and I need to practice our hovering.