Between familial issues with poverty, abuse, and addiction, American children face a lot of potential hardships. But there’s another troubling problem facing families that doesn’t get as much attention: Recent estimates show that 7% of children in this country experience growing up with a parent who is behind a paywall.
This is not good. No child should have to pay up to $49.95/month to access a parent.
According to new research by the US Administration for Children and Families, a small but significant percentage of children have at least one parent who is stuck behind a paywall, has gone to a subscription-based model, or requires upgrading to a premium version to unlock anything other than basic parenting features. The research found that having a parent behind a paywall can affect kids in myriad ways, including loss of quality time with the paywalled parent, feelings of inadequacy for not being able to afford to unlock their parent’s love and support, and resentment of parents who switch to a paywall model after years of free parenting.
One child interviewed for the study told a heartbreaking story of having to sell nightcrawlers in his front yard in order to be able to afford to unlock his father from behind a paywall, only for his father to raise the price once the boy had saved up enough money. A 7-year-old girl described the trauma she endured every time she’d spend 60 seconds playing with her mother before receiving a notification stating, “You have reached your monthly limit of Free Mom. Would you like to upgrade to Unlimited Mom for $39.95/month or $129.95/year (Best Value)?” Some children who couldn’t afford to unlock their parents from behind their paywalls were even forced to resort to using lower-quality free caregivers who were nearly unusable thanks to an abundance of scammy pop-up ads and un-skippable commercials.
Nope. There’s no way this is good for the country.
The increasing prevalence of paywalled parents may just seem like another part of living in the modern world, but just because it’s becoming normalized doesn’t mean it’s okay. Parents should consider all other options before putting themselves behind a paywall, because no kid deserves to grow up with a paywalled mom or dad, no matter how reasonable their unlock fee is. This is truly sad!
