It says a lot about Wayne Szalinski that he chooses to make shrinking technology his life's work. Coincidentally, it also ends up saying a lot about how his children feel about him.

First off, a shrink ray is quite a strange thing, no matter how you look at it. True, Wayne tells us about many of the practical implications of such technology during his business presentation, but who's he kidding? A shrink ray is just too weird for words. This helps paint Wayne as someone much more concerned with theoretical ideas than silly things like practicality and profitability.

But the shrink ray also serves to symbolically reflect the kids' relationship with their parents. The machine literally makes them small and seemingly insignificant, which reflects their feelings of going unnoticed and unheard by their parents.

Just check out this exchange between Nick and his detached dad:

NICK: Look, I finished mine. It looks just like yours, huh?

[...]

WAYNE: [absentmindedly] That's great, Nick.

Hmm. What's the opposite of heart-warming? Is "heart-cooling" a thing?

This might not be particularly complex symbolism, but it's a handy way of hammering home the theme of familial detachment that's a central conflict in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids…as well as setting into motion the whole "shrinking kids" thing.