You may remember Megan Morrone from TechTV -- or you may have heard her filling in on a podcast here or there. We've recently become reacquainted with her works through Jumping Monkeys, her blog, wherein Megan relates stories about her life as a parent of three children. She, with Leo Laporte, has just launched a new, affiliated podcast also called Jumping Monkeys, of which one episode (described as "parenting in the digital age") has been published. We listened to it and were so anxious to hear more from Megan that we hit her up for the "Three Questions . . ." treatment. To our delight, she complied.
1) Anybody familiar with your history knows that technology has played a large role in your career. How has being a parent informed or modified your relationship with tech? Has technology had any impact on your parenting methods?
Becoming a parent has made me both more and less connected to technology. In those first sleepless months you are literally a slave to your nursing, crying, pooping infant. You cannot ever count on having any free time to do anything for yourself and then when you least expect it your child will take a three hour nap. I found that schedule to be very conducive to responding to e-mails, writing blog posts, or reading random things on the Internet.
That schedule is, however, not at all conducive to designing Web sites, installing huge programs, or troubleshooting your computer. If you get interrupted in those kinds of bigger projects you have to start all over again and it can be frustrating. When my children were infants, none of them seemed to understand me when I said, "Mommy can't nurse you right now, I'm in the middle of debugging this program!"
Technology has had a huge impact on my parenting methods. I've just started to let my kids play on the computer with me. We spend a lot of time on Flickr looking at pictures of airplanes and sharks. I've also gotten great parenting advice from both strangers and friends through the Internet. Without those connections I think I would have felt a lot more isolated as a new mom.
2) Personally, since becoming a father, we've sort of slipped into what we term a "Familial Myopia" (others may call it being a hermit), wherein, basically, the scope of our world and activities has become vastly reduced in order to make life as a parent managable. Of course, a few new doors have been opened as well, but by and large we've simplified things. Did you have a similar experience? What are some of the things you've done to allow your family life to coexist peacefully with career goals/extracurricular activities?
