Parental refers to that linked to parents or relatives.
The concept of parental derives from the Latin word parentālis . It is an adjective that refers to what is linked to relatives or parents .
To understand what the idea of parental refers to, therefore, we must first define two other terms: relative and father . Two people are relatives when they maintain a kinship relationship with each other (that is, they have a bond by marriage, adoption, consanguinity, etc.). Parents, meanwhile, are those who have engendered or exercise a role associated with parenthood (of care and affection).
In the field of biology , parental refers to what refers to one or both parents. Through reproduction, an individual transmits a genetic inheritance to its descendant: the parent and the progeny are united by the parental bond.
Parental responsibility and control of children's activities
In this framework we can speak of parental responsibility . This is the name given to the set of commitments and obligations that parents have with respect to their children . That children are cared for and do not engage in dangerous actions, for example, is part of parental responsibility.
Parental control , on the other hand, is what parents exercise over their children's activities. This expression usually appears in the field of technology with reference to the surveillance that parents carry out on what their children do on the Internet .
One of the first points that worries older people regarding the content that is disseminated through the networks is pornography, all those images, static or video, that exhibit nudity and sexual acts. In accordance with the principles that our societies establish for raising children, we should not expose them to this material because it could distort their emotional development.
For this, there is parental control in Internet browsers , and even at the operating system level, which allows us to protect the little ones from sexual content simply by limiting their activity on the device using a password. When the adult wants to browse without restrictions, they only have to enter the password.
Parental control includes monitoring the activities that children carry out on the Internet.
Explicit and violent content
But sexual content is not exactly the most worrying content on the Internet, since there is a regrettable load of explicit violence , both in graphic and textual formats, which are unpleasant for most adults and should in no way be seen by minors.
For example, sometimes we search for the name of a deceased famous person and among the results we see photos of their corpse; or we want to know the meaning of a term related to violence and we receive results in images that turn our stomach. Fortunately, all of this can be blocked for any user of the device, even the elderly, but the most important thing is that it is not seen by a child .
In the realm of video games , parental controls allow parents to block the use of the most violent or explicit titles unless a password known only to them is entered. This way, they can buy war games or games whose content is not suitable for their children with the peace of mind of knowing that they will not be able to run them.
Parental exhaustion
The notion of parental exhaustion , for its part, is focused on the intense fatigue that human beings can feel due to their role as parents. This condition arises from the physical and emotional stress that is generated, in certain cases, during upbringing.
Diagnosing parental burnout is not always easy, since its symptoms are often confused with those of other diseases, for example, anemia. Constant tiredness can falsely alert doctors to a nutritional deficiency.