Technology facilitates father-child relationship

Technology facilitates father-child relationship

JAKARTA (JP): Rapid advances in technology are robbing fathers
of their traditional excuse for avoiding their share of parenting
-- lack of time.

The telephone, E-mail and the facsimile machine can be put to
good use in improving communication between fathers and their
children.

And some modern Indonesian families have been making the most
these new facilities.

"With E-mail, my husband has a very intense relationship with
our children," said Kartini Syahrir, an anthropologist, on
Saturday.

Apart from child care, Kartini said middle class men had also
been taking a more active role in other domestic tasks over the
past five years, such as shopping.

"Our contacts with the outside world have made the division of
labor more flexible," Kartini said. "A virtual revolution in
technology, mainly in communications, has reached the regency
(rural) level."

This phenomenon was part of "global civil society", she said,
which gives priority to efficiency and information.

"This has also influenced our behavior, where the transfer of
tasks traditionally allotted to a particular sex has become more
accepted."

Kartini was a speaker at a seminar on fathers' role in child
care organized by the Tiara lifestyle magazine.

The magazine's Deputy Chief Editor Widya Saraswati told the
seminar about a recent survey, carried out jointly by the Applied
Psychology Institute and the Asia Study Institute, which analyzed
173 middle class couples who had been married for between 10 and
20 years.

The survey found that men did a fair share of child care,
while leaving most domestic duties to their wives.

"According to the survey, men and women share in child care,
but women are mostly still responsible for managing funds and the
household," said Saraswati.

The survey also found that mothers were more involved in
monitoring their children's daily progress, while fathers
specialized in rewards and punishments.

State Minister of Population Haryono Suyono, in a prepared
speech read on his behalf at the seminar, said new norms
regarding the tasks of men and women might change the concept of
"manhood".

"In child care the role of men will increase the function of
education by the family. Rather than viewing this as the monopoly
of women, husbands must no longer feel uncomfortable in accepting
part of this responsibility," said Haryono, whose speech was read
by A. Mongid of the ministry's Family Welfare division.

The expanding role of men in domestic affairs "will, it is
hoped, occur naturally, without the emergence of rivalry between
men and women, but with mutual respect, in the adjustment towards
partnership," the minister said.

A noted psychologist in attendance at the seminar, Utami
Munandar, said there was evidence that children who received more
attention from their fathers developed better.

Another psychologist, Dewi Matindas, said children needed both
fathers and mothers who were responsive to their needs.

"Parents, including mothers, often neglect children unless
they clamor for attention," she said.

The seminar's moderator, humorologist Jaya Suprana, said that
because he could not make time for children, he and his wife had
decided not to have any of their own.

They have adopted many orphans instead.

"This way we show our sense of responsibility to
humanity...orphans also have a right to child care," Suprana
said. (anr)