Mothering Tech Savvy Children · Global Voices
Juan Arellano

Julia Cuéllar gets inspiration from the book Los bárbaros [The Barbarians; es], essays about mutation, by Alessandro Baricco, to reflect on Mujeres Construyendo [Building Women], about maternity in times of smartphones and social networks.
I am a plant, I am the mother of zombie children, barbarians. My challenge is the same of every other mother. As a plant that wonders and that from her hallway is surprised with what thousands of blue birds making tweet, tweet have to say, it's hard for me to answer: am I trained to prepare them for the world they'll have to live in as teenagers, as adults? What self-management code do I have to inject into their brains? What does their “mom, computers and cellphones make me happy” mean? Or “mom, I didn't see you because I didn't run into you at the party, but forward me the video”? What models do they create when they learn to sing in English, Mandarin and Spanish on YouTube while I read the notes Walter Benjamin wrote about Mickey Mouse in 1931?
After sharing stories that she considers contradictions where the maternal whirlpool makes her dive in, she concludes:
The fact is your child is alive and asks: “Mom, why do stars shine?” If Google helps us answering them by gathering every answer humanity has invented and uploaded to the net, of course, what does it matter. Let's be bridges between plants and barbarian-zombies, let's be Beethoven and compose the Ninth [Symphony]. This is my work after four years of being a mother. Thank you, my children.