Fast Families, Virtual Children

The Internet, cell phones, and other technologies have changed the ways in which people conduct their family lives, raise children, and navigate the blurry boundary between work and home. Private life is colonized by employers, teachers, corporations; family time is taken up by work, homework, and shopping. What it means to be parents and children has changed dramatically. This book shows how the nurturance of family has increasingly become a willful, radical idea in an era of pervasive technology. The authors analyze important trends, including the acceleration and attenuation of childhood, and offer a children s bill of rights and accompanying parental responsibilities."

Ben Agger is professor of sociology and humanities at the University of Texas at Arlington. He also directs the Center for Theory there. Agger works in the areas of critical theory, cultural studies, and media studies. Among his recent books are Postponing the Postmodern and Speeding Up Fast Capitalism , and he is currently working on a book about the 1960s titled The Sixties at 40: Radicals Remember and Look Forward . Agger edits the online journal Fast Capitalism (www.fastcapitalism.com)., Beth Anne Shelton is professor of sociology and director of women’s studies at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her primary areas of research include gender, work, and family. Shelton’s published work has focused primarily on the relationship between work and family, with emphasis on the household division of labor between women and men and the implications of this division of labor for women’s employment and earnings.