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)