Maya, Selfe, and I

Chapter Six “The Role of Parents” was the chapter that seemed to fall the farthest from what was the presumed goal of being enlightening. The chapter opens strong, “You can sit with your child and prompt him to show you something…you’re getting close to the kid and gaining insight into ways of learning…is fosters the relationship between you and the kid (Everson qtd in Selfe 98).” On the following two pages Selfe continues on to give experts of computer magazines suggesting the parents can coach, support and act as positive role models for their kids, but it is with this introduction of the computer magazines that Selfe seems to loose track of the role and the power of a parent.  Selfe reduces this role to being a binary system of either the good, providing parent or the bad, non-providing parent.  Selfe claims that this is what the advertisements of the time did, which is no different than what any other advertisement does when selling products meant for kids, but then does it herself by reducing the parents role to that of the agents to the cause, meaning that the parent only seem to have played a role in this situation by providing the needed funding.  In reality the parents role went (and goes) far beyond funding, as was suggested at the opening of the chapter and then somehow moved past far to quickly. 

 For another look at this Chapter see Josh's blog here, he also talks about the idea that this good/bad parent marketing is not new or exclusive to this industry.