Children's Exposure to Negative Internet Content: Effects of Family Context

Concerned that inappropriate Internet content may jeopardize the health or safety of children, this study is designed to provide insights into children's exposure to negative Internet content by building a hypothesized theoretical model that examines the effect of family context factors (family cohesion, shared Web activities, parents' Internet skill, and parents' perceived control) on children's exposure to negative Internet content. Findings from the 178 participating families who completed the survey demonstrate that children are more exposed to negative Internet content than what most parents expect. Parents' perceived control, obtained through shared Web activities and family cohesion, was determined to actually reduce children's exposure to negative Internet content.     

Topic Valence and Ambiguity in Parent-Emerging Adult Child Postdivorce Discussions

Communication privacy management theory maintains permeability rules manifest as communication strategies used during conversation. Although postdivorce families tend to privilege openness, this conclusion is based on recalled reports and single discussions about negatively valenced topics. To determine whether ambiguity functions as a manifestation of permeability rules and its effects on relational satisfaction and psychological well-being, 39 parent-emerging adult child dyads discussed one negatively valenced and one positively valenced postdivorce topic. Results indicated parents were ambiguous while discussing negatively and positively valenced topics, and children were perceptive of parents' ambiguity during the conversations. No differences were found between parents' use and children's perceptions of parents' ambiguity. Further, children's relational satisfaction and psychological well-being were affected by ambiguity in both discussions.     

The Implications of Vantage Point in Parental Mediation of Television and Child's Attitudes Toward Drinking Alcohol

A survey of 273 children in grades 3, 6, and 9, and their parents investigated parental mediation effects on a child's message interpretation process both from a child's and from a parent's perspective. The study found that children's reports of positive mediation (parental reinforcement of media messages) were significantly higher than parents' reports. Parents and children agreed more closely on reports of negative mediation (counter-reinforcement of media messages). Only the children's reports predicted variables influencing their decision-making for drinking alcohol. The results suggest that children's reports are probably more useful than parents' reports for predicting a child's cognition and behavior.     

Comparative Optimism in Online Credibility Evaluation Among Parents and Children

This study investigates comparative optimism—whereby people perceive themselves as relatively invulnerable to risks as compared to others—in the evaluation of online information credibility by children and their parents. Results of a representative national survey of Internet users revealed significant antecedents of children's and parents' comparative optimism, including demographic characteristics, cognitive thinking style, and perceived self-efficacy. Parental optimism was also found to relate to the mediation strategies used to regulate children's Internet use, and comparative optimism in children was associated with tendencies to believe online information and specific evaluation behavior. Findings are considered in terms of their theoretical implications and with regard to the role of parents in children's digital information literacy development.     

Parental Mediation of Preschool Children's Television Viewing

This study examines parental mediation of preschool children's television viewing. Becker's (1981) theory of parent-child relations is used to frame mediation in terms of parenting resources. A survey of 129 parents of preschool children (ages 1-5) reveals that when resources are in highest demand, attitudes toward television are a factor in deciding whether television mediation will benefit children. Demographic variables, parents' attitudes about television, and parents' involvement with children all significantly predicted restrictive and instructive mediation. The findings are discussed in light of young Children's needs for mediation as a guide to television's novel set of technical and cultural codes.     

Correlations of Media Habits Across Time,Generations, and Media Modalities

This study investigates media uses and preferences across two generations and across television and video games. Path analyses using data from 335 families show that the number of hours of television viewed by the first generation (parents at age 30) positively predicts the amount of television use by their offspring in the second generation 18 years later, as well as their own amount of television viewing at that time. The analyses also show that the amount of video game playing among offspring is significantly related to their own as well as their parents' concurrent TV use. While there is no similar longitudinal correlation between a preference for violent television by parents at age 30 and that of their offspring 18 years later, parents' violent television preferences at age 48 are positively correlated with their offspring's concurrent preference for violent television content. Additionally, the violent television preferences of offspring are positively correlated with their own preferences for violent video games. These effects were found while controlling for SES, intellectual achievement, and offspring gender. These results suggest that the amount of time devoted to media use and preferences for violent media generalize across media modalities and are transmitted across generations.     

“Feeling caught” as a mediator of adolescents' and young adults' avoidance and satisfaction with their parents in divorced and non-divorced households

Numerous researchers have argued that divorce may not have as much of an impact on children's relationships with their parents as the degree of interparental con.ict (e.g., Ahrons & Rodgers, 1987; Amato, Loomis, &Booth, 1995). In the current model the degree to which adolescents and young adults felt caught between their parents was tested as a mediator between divorce and children's avoidance and satisfaction with them. The results revealed that divorce was largely associated with avoidance and satisfaction through children's feelings of being caught, which were a function of their parents' demand—withdraw patterns, communication competence, and other variables. When divorce was removed from the model, the specific relationships in the model applied to children of divorced and non-divorced households. Nevertheless, children of divorce reported greater avoidance, feelings of being caught, greater parental demand—withdraw patterns, less parental communication competence, less closeness, and less satisfaction than children from first marriage families. The. t of the model as a function of the age of the child is also discussed.     

Adult Children's Experiences with their Parent's Infidelity: Communicative Protection and Access Rules in the Absence of Divorce

Guided by Communication Privacy Management (CPM), the goal of the current study was to examine parental infidelity and to learn what, if any, rules were enacted by participants to either provide access to or protect the information of their parent's infidelity. Rules used by participants to manage this information inside their family were labeled as internal, while rules used to manage this information outside their family were labeled as external. Participants included 13 adult children whose still married parents' relationship involved infidelity. Results indicated that participants created protection rules including two internal (maintenance and cultural) rules and one external (protecting the family from outside scrutiny) rule. Five access rules (context, sex, age, physical environment, and code terms), all internal, were also identified. The results of this study highlight the usefulness of CPM when examining how the knowledge of a parent's infidelity is managed by their children.     

Negotiation of Dialectical Contradictions by Parents who have Experienced the Death of a Child

This study examines how bereaved parents experience communicating with individuals in their social network. The bereaved parents in this study experienced two dialectical contradictions: (a) between the physical absence of their child and the continuing presence and emotional bond with their deceased child; and (b) between being open or closed when deciding whether to talk about the deceased child to others. Results describe how parents communicatively negotiated these contradictions. The article concludes by discussing practical applications for bereaved parents, bereavement support groups, helping professionals, and individuals within the bereaved parents' social network.     

Central and South America mass communication: Selected information sources

The current experiment employed a mixed design to assess word learning in 70 infants under the age of 2. Infants (4–24 months) were randomly assigned to watch 1 of 2 educational DVDs in their homes, 6 times over a 2-week period. The 2 DVDs were identical except that each contained 3 different low frequency words (e.g., lens). In addition, participants were randomly assigned to a mediation condition, where parents were told to watch with their child and call attention to the DVD and the words being taught; controls were instructed to allow their child to watch alone. The stimulus DVDs were designed to mimic a commercially available DVD such as Baby Einstein. Following the 2-week exposure period, participants were brought to the testing location and tested on all 6 words, both those that were included in the DVD they were exposed to and those that appeared in the other DVD. Results suggested that infants 17 months and older benefitted from repeat exposure to the DVD; whereas younger infants did not. In addition, mediation did not seem to aid in children's learning from the DVD; although not all parents in the mediation condition complied.     

Parental Self-efficacy and Sensitivity During Playtime Interactions with Young Children: Unpacking the Curvilinear Association

Although scholars and service providers typically assume that parental self-efficacy (PSE) facilitates sensitive parenting, this study finds that the association between PSE and observer ratings of parents' sensitivity during free play actually is curvilinear. Parents (33 mothers, 5 fathers) from an intergenerational learning program serving low-income families completed the Self-Efficacy for Parenting Tasks Index and were videotaped during a 15-minute play period with their infant/toddler at program entry. Parents' self-reported PSE is positively, albeit weakly, associated with observer ratings of parental sensitivity from low to moderate levels of self-efficacy but inversely associated with sensitivity from moderate to high self-efficacy. Qualitative analyses show that mothers who report high PSE but are rated as low in sensitivity introduce toys when their child is already engaged, restrict their child's access to toys, physically manipulate their child, and violate their child's proximal space. Parenting education programs need to develop strategies for reaching parents who enter with high levels of confidence but lack knowledge of competent parenting practices.     

Bereaved Parents' Negotiation of Identity Following the Death of a Child

This study examines changes in bereaved parents' identities following the death of a child. The bereaved parents in this study experienced two dialectical contradictions of identity, which are: (a) a parent without a child to parent and (b) I'm an outsider-I'm an insider. Results describe how parents used communication to negotiate these contradictions of identity. Implications for the study of parental bereavement, communication, and identity are discussed.     

Parental Monitoring of Children’s Television Viewing in a Sample of Peruvian Caregivers

Parental monitoring of children’s television viewing is an important family practice that helps children understand the messages they find on advertisements and program content. Research points at different dimensions of monitoring, including parental co-viewing, rules about when and how much time children can watch television, and active parental mediation. The study describes different dimensions of parental monitoring in a sample of 303 caregivers of primary school children living in Lima. Main findings reveal that about a third of the sample engaged in parental monitoring never, rarely or sometimes, the education level of the caregiver was positively associated with limiting the time children can watch television, and that child’s age was negatively associated with the frequency of active mediation and limits on the content children may watch on TV. Further research is needed in order to understand the practice of parental monitoring across children’s age groups in the context of Peru.     

A U.S.-Chinese Comparison of Affectionate Communication in Parent-Child Relationships

Affectionate communication is central to the maintenance of relational closeness, but it is also subject to relational, contextual, and cultural factors. This study was designed to examine the cultural effects on affectionate communication in parent-child relationships in the United States and China. Results indicated that Chinese fathers and mothers expressed less verbal, nonverbal, and supportive affection to their children than American parents. Both Chinese and American parents expressed affection to their children more through supportive behaviors than through verbal and nonverbal behaviors. In both cultures, mothers engaged in more verbal, nonverbal, and supportive affection with their children than fathers.     

The Anticipated Utility of Zoos for Developing Moral Concern in Children

Abstract This study asked why parents value zoo experiences for themselves and their children. It proposes a new theory regarding the psychological value of such experiences for the development of identity. The study used a constructivist grounded theory approach to explore parenting perspectives on the value of zoo visits undertaken by eight families from three adjacent inner‐city neighborhoods in a major American city. The results suggest that parents use zoo visits as tools for promoting family values. These parents felt that experiences with live animals were necessary to encourage holistic empathy, to extend children's sense of justice to include natural systems, and to model the importance of family relationships. The author concludes that parents find zoos useful as a tool for helping their children to develop skills with altruism, to transfer environmental values, to elevate children's self‐esteem, and to inculcate social norms that they believe will aid in their children's social success in the future.     

The relationship between parental traits and open family communication: Affective orientation and verbal aggression

This study examined haw the parental traits of affective orientation and verbal aggressiveness were associated with openness in family communication patterns. Responses were obtained from 133 college‐aged children and their parents.

Parental affective orientation was positively related to their children's perceptions of more open family communication patterns, while verbal aggressiveness was negatively related. Parents’ and children's levels of trait affective orientation were moderately correlated (r=.45) with children's AO levels being higher than their parents’.     

An analysis of the association between topic avoidance and dissatisfaction: comparing perceptual and interpersonal explanations

There is consistent evidence that individuals tend to be dissatisfied with their relationships if they report that topics are frequently avoided in those relationships. The extant literature contains two plausible general explanations for such findings: perceptual processes (e.g., the perceptions that the relational partner avoids are unrelated to the partner's actual avoidance but adversely influence relational satisfaction) and interpersonal processes (e.g., one individual's topic avoidance diminishes the counterpart's satisfaction because the counterpart accurately detects that avoidance). The current study compared the utility of these two explanations with data gathered from two separate samples, one including 100 heterosexual dating couples and the other including 114 parent-child dyads. Findings indicated that both perceptual processes and interpersonal processes help account for the association between topic avoidance and dissatisfaction. For example, the interpersonal explanation was consistent with evidence that boyfriends, girlfriends, and parents (but not children) all had perceptions of their counterpart's topic avoidance that were more accurate than would be expected by chance, and that those perceptions of avoidance were, in turn, associated with dissatisfaction. Despite such evidence for interpersonal factors, the effect sizes associated with perceptual processes were, in general, significantly stronger than those associated with interpersonal processes. The relative salience of the perceptual processes has important practical implications, supporting theoretical arguments that there are likely circumstances when topic avoidance can help maintain a cohesive relationship.     

Explaining parental coviewing: The role of social facilitation and arousal

This study explores the relationship between parental coviewing and children’s psychophysiological responses to television exposure within a framework of social facilitation. A total of 88 children aged 6–13 years and one of each of their parents participated in a 2 (presence or absence of the parent)?×?2 (exciting or non-exciting TV content) between-subjects experiment. Results indicated that the presence of a coviewing parent was associated with an increase in children’s arousal (higher skin conductance levels) and cognitive resource allocation (lower heart rate), especially for younger children who came from homes where parental coviewing was a relatively frequent activity. These findings suggest that the mere presence of a coviewing parent is sufficient to alter children’s processing of television messages.     

Expanding the Unidirectional View on Parental Television Mediation: Children’s Guidance of Their Parent’s Television Use

Compared to parental mediation research, much less is known about how children influence and guide their parents’ media use. This study examined whether children also mediate the television use of their parents. Measures of an existing television mediation scale were reversed to the perspective of the child guiding the parent’s television use. A sample of 187 parent-child dyads completed a cross-sectional survey in Flanders (Belgium). Factor analyses showed that the original subscales were reproduced with high internal validity. Both parents and children had congruent views about children’s television mediation; television mediation and children's restrictive mediation was positively associated with conflict in the family.     

Parents,ICTs, and Children's Prospects for Success: Interviews along the Digital “Access Rainbow”

Interviews with 52 parents of varying income levels and positions on the digital “access rainbow” are used to explore how parents discuss the widespread belief that ICT (information and communication technologies) access affects their children's prospects for success. While all parents agreed that ICT competence is important, differences emerged along socioeconomic lines regarding how parents conceptualized the computer/success relationship. While upper-income parents demonstrated greater ICT proficiency and access and assumed that their children needed ICT proficiency for success, parents in the lower-income groups saw the need for ICT proficiency as more context-dependent and adopted broader definitions of success. All parents expressed concerns about the negative attributes of ICTs as entertainment rather than educational media; for lower- and middle-income families, however, this objection justified limits on use or access among children.