Katie Holmes And Family Have A Skype Rule

Katie Holmes sat down with InStyle for the August issue to chat about her marriage to Tom Cruise and her budding style icon Suri Cruise. The mother of one revealed that between she and her husband’s busy filming schedules, both parents are active users of Skype — their preferred method for keeping in touch. Little Suri is also given the creative task of decorating her own room wherever they go.

Katie told InStyle:

In our family we have a policy: We make it work. We Skype, and we try not to go for a week without seeing each other. We’re also very good at setting up camp wherever we go. Before we leave we spend a lot of time online looking at maps and seeing what there is to do. I know all the good places to go before I land. And my daughter gets to create her own bedroom: We’ll bring some stuff she has and pick out something new.

While not all parents can afford to “pick out something new” when traveling, the Cruise’s use of Skype reveals that even the busiest (and wealthiest) of couples still rely on the relatively free technology to keep their family intact. Skype has now become synonymous with keeping long-distance relationships (even temporarily long-distance) together and Katie’s tossing out of the name when discussing the dynamics of her own family suggests how essential to some families those face-to-face capabilities are.