Businessweek blogger Amy Dunkin writes about how cell phones have become a useful tool for the working parent. Certainly I don't know a single working parent who doesn't have a cell phone. In this post-9/11 era, I also think many of us view it as a matter of basic safety (although the scary reality is that on 9/11, most people got only sporadic cell phone service in Manhattan. A friend of mine drove to Newark at 1 a.m. looking for his wife because her last cell phone call to him broke up in Newark.)

What Dunkin doesn't address is whether kids should be equipped with cell phones. My kids don't have cell phones, though my 10-year-old is heavily lobbying for one. If I were working full time in New York City, I might consider giving her one, but I have heard a lot of very compelling reasons not to give kids their own cell phone. The biggest reason: Unlike a landline phone, we won't answer their phone (and hear who is calling them) and can be unaware of who they are chatting with and how much chatting they're do. It's the same reason why I won't let my kids have a computer in their bedroom. If the laptop is in the public spaces--living room, family room, kitchen--I can have a sense of how much time they're online and what they're doing there too.

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