Reading as a Luxury

Ron Charles asked a thought-provoking question in a recent newsletter: “Will human-raised children become a luxury product?” The question comes from a doctor whose waiting room used to be filled with conversation, which is now filled with silence as people — children and adults — scroll on their phones. Whereas people used to fill the waiting room time either chatting or reading aloud to a child, they are now scrolling on separate devices.

But I would argue we’ve been in this state for a very long time, long before AI or even smartphones came on the scene. Having time to slow down and engage in hands-on parenting has always been somewhere between a luxury and a conscious choice. To have time to read to your child or use that downtime for conversation, you need to have space in your schedule. You need to not be pulled in 20 directions. You need to not have a full-time job, or if you have a full-time job, have a lot of flexibility in that job to build hands-on parenting into your day. And, frankly, you are likely giving up something yourself if you’re working full-time and parenting hands-on. Something has to give, and it’s probably going to be something related to the adult’s physical or mental health. There are only so many hours in a day.

So the real question is how we’re going to build that time into the day so we can have working parents who use that waiting room time to read to their kids instead of hand them a device so they can catch up on work while away from work. Or just catch some needed downtime from life and time to mindlessly scroll instead of do one more thing. I say this as someone who read to her kids well into middle school so we could discuss books as they unfolded. So I love reading aloud. But I also see the other side.