Love the One You’re With? Not when it comes to Grandparents.
As I stewed over a particularly annoying piece of feedback to my last post, the record playing in our office seemed to taunt me:
“If you can’t be with the one you love, honey…”
Despite very different context, Stephen Stills was siding with our naysayers’ claims: “Grandparent-grandchild bonds can only be built in-person.”
Really?!? So if your parents/in-laws live far away, start saving up because plane tickets are your only hope. And if they live internationally, maybe spend your limited resources elsewhere and adopt some local surrogate grandparents for your kids (ie “love the one you’re with”). And if there is some condition that keeps you, your kids, or your parents from traveling, best to just forget you have family elsewhere!
( ☝ that’s all sarcasm)
Come on. Even the most ardent tech critics can hopefully acknowledge that it can play some role in relationship building. In the remote vs in-office work debate, for instance, even those who vote “in-office” don’t argue that Zoom, Slack, and Google docs aren’t valuable collaboration tools that supplement in-person communication. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
While several factors have led to frayed extended family bonds, the most obvious one is the growing physical distance that often separates non-nuclear family members. But the root causes for that growing separation are often positive: compared to bygone eras, people move away from family to chase better economic opportunities, to create lives and raise families with people from other regions/countries, and generally to experience more of the world, which hopefully instills more empathy and understanding for other cultures. It’s hard to argue these aren’t incredibly positive developments, even if one consequence has been the strain placed on familial ties.
So unless you believe that everyone should move back to their hometowns or that family bonds aren’t worth it to begin with, I don’t really get it. Should we be shifting our roadmap to focus on teleportation if we want to support family connection for those who live far apart? My cofounder Mike is a wicked smart software engineer, but my powerful Product Manager senses tell me that probably wouldn’t have the right risk/reward tradeoff. (Note: I want to be clear that I’m a huge fan of teleportation as a concept, so my commentary here is only questioning our ability to deliver on that dream)
None of this is to say that in-person connection isn’t critical, or that we shouldn’t strive to see family whenever possible. But with all due respect, we think it’s asinine to argue that tech can’t help build up the foundation for strong family bonds between those visits, particularly for the millions whose lives have brought them away from extended family for very worthwhile reasons.
When it comes to family, at Kinsome we think you should love the ones you love, whether you can be with them IRL or not.
My Father-in-Law playing “animales” with my youngest via Facetime (a favorite pastime for at least one of them!)
