Newspaper Article Summary/Reaction
Cohen, Deborah L. “Working the family social net” The Baltimore Sun 10 February 2013.
Summary
This article is about how teenagers are using their parent’s facebook accounts to help with finding themselves jobs. Their parents are posting statuses about their son or daughter looking for work either at a professional level helping with software that their child is familiar with, or just posting that their child is looking for busy work such as cleaning, babysitting, yard work. This seems to work very well since the job market is rather tight for teenagers. Cohen writes that this is “in part because older and sometimes overqualified applicants compete for the burger flipping, shirt-folding gigs that used to be their specialty.” This has caused the number of young people employed to drop in the last five years.
As much as the parents want to help, there has to be a line drawn as to how much they should be helping. The parents are teetering on the fine line of helping and doing it all themselves. One parent states that she will post on Facebook that her son will provide various cleaning and sitting services and will then hand him any contact information and will have him do any negotiations for that service. She states that the “two have worked together to research how to price jobs, but she leaves it to him to work out the details.” Michael Woodward, and organizational psychologist specializing in workplace issues sums it up as such, “It’s one thing to help kids build bridges, it’s another to help them cross, you have to be the coach – not the doer.” The parents, however, also need to be aware of any child labor laws and work rules for their state. “They need to be cognizant of what the child labor laws are so that kids don’t get taken advantage of,” states Denise Drake, an employment attorney.
Another aspect about the parents posting of facebook, is the safety issue. This poses a conflict with the previous paragraph, as the parents have to play a
Summary
This article is about how teenagers are using their parent’s facebook accounts to help with finding themselves jobs. Their parents are posting statuses about their son or daughter looking for work either at a professional level helping with software that their child is familiar with, or just posting that their child is looking for busy work such as cleaning, babysitting, yard work. This seems to work very well since the job market is rather tight for teenagers. Cohen writes that this is “in part because older and sometimes overqualified applicants compete for the burger flipping, shirt-folding gigs that used to be their specialty.” This has caused the number of young people employed to drop in the last five years.
As much as the parents want to help, there has to be a line drawn as to how much they should be helping. The parents are teetering on the fine line of helping and doing it all themselves. One parent states that she will post on Facebook that her son will provide various cleaning and sitting services and will then hand him any contact information and will have him do any negotiations for that service. She states that the “two have worked together to research how to price jobs, but she leaves it to him to work out the details.” Michael Woodward, and organizational psychologist specializing in workplace issues sums it up as such, “It’s one thing to help kids build bridges, it’s another to help them cross, you have to be the coach – not the doer.” The parents, however, also need to be aware of any child labor laws and work rules for their state. “They need to be cognizant of what the child labor laws are so that kids don’t get taken advantage of,” states Denise Drake, an employment attorney.
Another aspect about the parents posting of facebook, is the safety issue. This poses a conflict with the previous paragraph, as the parents have to play a