This may seem like an odd thing to say, but is it possible that the more educated parents today have less understanding of how their young children engage in the new digital world than parents who have their children in their twenties. Parents now in their twenties grew up in the 1990s as the Internet exploded on to the scene and the then-teenagers led much of its adoption. Parents now in their thirties and forties were not kids in the 1990s. Here are some facts from a Washington Post article about at what age college educated parents are having children:

Demographic data obtained by The Post indicate that in metro areas nationwide, including cities and suburbs, 13 percent of men and 31 percent of women ages 25 to 29 with four-year college degrees have had children, according to an analysis of 2000-06 social survey data from the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. By contrast, 49 percent of men and 62 percent of women in that age group with less education have had children, according to the analysis by University of Maryland sociologist Steve Martin.

New data from the National Center for Health Statistics also show that college-educated mothers are usually about 30 when they deliver their first child.

“This is very significant data. It’s giving numbers to a trend people have been only inferring,” said Stephanie Coontz, director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families. The data, she said, show that “there is this increasing divergence of highly educated women and less-educated women.”

This may seem like an odd thing to say, but is it possible that the more educated parents today have less understanding of how their young children engage in the new digital world than parents who have their children in their twenties. Parents now in their twenties grew up in the 1990s as the Internet [...]