Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

A few of the girls I went to school with are new moms. I ran in­to one of them over the week­end and we laughed about the fact that she was just hav­ing her first when my first is near­ly 20 years old. In a sep­a­rate con­ver­sa­tion, an­oth­er friend who has old­er teens her­self re­mind­ed me about our own teenage foibles, in­clud­ing the ridicu­lous prac­tice of tap­ping the hang-up but­ton of locked phones to make il­lic­it phone calls at all hours of the night.

Now her teen daugh­ter is on the In­ter­net all night chat­ting with friends the way girls of my gen­er­a­tion would, ex­cept that in­stead of cradling those heavy Tel­co hand­sets in the crook of our necks, this gen­er­a­tion types on com­put­er or Black­ber­ry key­boards.

My own younger daugh­ter sur­prised me the oth­er day by an­nounc­ing she was on Twit­ter. I checked out her ac­count and asked her to delete it be­cause the con­tent was in­ap­pro­pri­ate for some­one her age. The In­ter­net is for­ev­er and child­hood er­rors in this age of com­mu­ni­ca­tion could fol­low her around in ways my five-hour phone calls in the dead of night nev­er could.

My old school friend, the one with the new­born, ob­served that there are things they don't tell you when you're be­com­ing a par­ent. We were talk­ing about get­ting sup­port from rel­a­tives as a new mom, some­thing she hadn't con­sid­ered all that se­ri­ous­ly be­fore the ba­by came but which she quick­ly grew to ap­pre­ci­ate as es­sen­tial. The things they don't tell you, she said.

There are things they don't tell you, in truth. They don't tell you that as a mom you're go­ing to get fed up and ex­haust­ed some­times, that you'll need back-up some­times just to go to the bath­room. (Well, they might tell you, but some lessons you on­ly re­al­ly ab­sorb through liv­ing them. Par­ent­ing is full of those kinds of lessons.) And while there are some things they don't tell you, there are things they can't tell you. This is a whole dif­fer­ent world from the one in which we grew up, and by the time that new­born is in her teens it would have changed even more.

Who could have an­tic­i­pat­ed the In­ter­net? Or Star Trek com­mu­ni­ca­tors come to life in the form of cell phones that are smarter than their users? Eter­nal vig­i­lance is not on­ly the price of free­dom, it's al­so the cost of be­ing a par­ent. You have to watch your chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly in these times.

Af­ter the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, there was a small me­dia storm fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of a sto­ry on the Web site Jezebel, which not on­ly quot­ed but al­so named teens who had Tweet­ed racist state­ments about the new­ly re-elect­ed Barack Oba­ma. The dis­cus­sion cen­tred around the ethics of nam­ing the teens in­volved, be­cause those ob­nox­ious Tweets would now fol­low those teens even af­ter their Twit­ter ac­counts had been delet­ed. Again, I have to say thank God I on­ly had the tele­phone; Lord knows what might have come down through the ages to haunt me every time I Google my name.

Of course, par­ents should aim to raise the kinds of chil­dren who don't Tweet rude com­ments, but I al­so thought I was rais­ing that kind of child un­til I ran in­to the re­al­i­ty of her Twit­ter page in which she was retweet­ing Jen­na Mar­bles, a de­cid­ed­ly R-rat­ed come­di­enne and vlog­ger from the US. It was eye open­ing, to say the least. But this is the world we live in now. Jen­na Mar­bles is on the In­ter­net, the same In­ter­net where The La­dy has to go to do re­search and sub­mit as­sign­ments, the same In­ter­net where she watch­es YouTube videos for amuse­ment.

I don't hold with the idea of mon­i­tor­ing chil­dren's every move, but vig­i­lance, as I said, is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary in rais­ing chil­dren. How many of those par­ents of the teens named in the Jezebel ar­ti­cle even knew their chil­dren had Twit­ter ac­counts? How many knew what their chil­dren were Tweet­ing? At the end of the month, some­body's moth­er's phone bill re­vealed our all-night il­lic­it tele­phone calls. There's no bell on to­day's cat.

But to my old school­mate with the new­born, I say con­grats and best of luck. Breast feed as long as you can–de­spite the moun­tain of dirty di­a­pers, it will be the best for the child and for you in the long run–and ap­pre­ci­ate this time with your ba­by. Be­fore you know it, that ba­by will be grown and telling you all about her Twit­ter ac­count, or what­ev­er will emerge in 2024.