persuasive essay with inside citation
Parent-Child Communication about Internet
Use and Acceptance of Parental Authority
Katrien Symons, Koen Ponnet, Ini Vanwesenbeeck,
Michel Walrave, and Joris Van Ouytsel
Structural equation modeling is applied to investigate how parents’ commu-
nication with their child about his or her Internet use is linked to the child’s
acceptance of parental authority in the context of Internet use, and how this
in turn is linked to the child’s social media behavior. This study surveyed
children aged
1
3 to 18 and their mothers and fathers (N = 357 families) and
found that acceptance of parental authority is a key factor in the effectiveness
of parental mediation. It is recommended that parental mediation is studied as
a dynamic process shaped by both parents and children.
While the Internet offers many opportunities, young people are also confronted
with certain risks therein, such as cyberbullying, online sexual harassment, inaccu-
rate health information, or simply excessive screen time (Fahy et al., 2016; Moreno,
Kelleher, Ameenuddin, & Rastogi, 2014; Sorbring, 2014). A great number of studies
have examined parents’ options to help their children reap the benefits of Internet
use while reducing potential negative outcomes, also referred to as “parental
mediation” (Kalmus, Blinka, & Ólafsson, 2015; Sasson & Mesch, 2014).
Socialization theory, which states that children learn how to function within
society, considers parents the primary agents who teach their children what is per-
ceived as acceptable (Maccoby, 1983, 1992). Parental mediation is considered a typ
e
of socialization and refers to how parents use certain strategies to mitigate the negative
Koen Ponnet (Ph.D. in Psychology, Ghent University) is a professor in the field of Health Psychology, Media
Psychology and Social Psychology at Ghent University. His research interests include the determinants of
online and offline health and risk behaviors of adolescents and adults.
Katrien Symons (Ph.D) is a postdoctoral researcher in Communication Studies at Ghent University and
Odisee University College. Her research interests include online behavior, parental mediation and sexting.
Ini Vanwesenbeeck (Ph.D) is a postdoctoral researcher in Communication Studies at Ghent University. Her
research interests include advertising literacy, social media behavior and influencer marketing.
Michel Walrave (Ph.D.) is a professor of Communication Studies at the University of Antwerp. His research
interests include online self-disclosure, privacy, sexting, cyberbullying, parental mediation, sharenting.
Joris Van Ouytsel (PhD, University of Antwerp) is a postdoctoral researcher in communication studies at the
University of Antwerp with the support of the Research Foundation – Flanders. His research interests include
the use of digital media within interpersonal relationships (e.g., sexting and cyber dating abuse), media
literacy and health communication.
© 2019 Broadcast Education Association Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 64(1), 2020, pp. 1–19
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2019.1681870 ISSN: 0883-8151 print/1550-6878 online
1
https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/08838151.2019.1681870&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2020-02-27
effects of media on their children (Clark, 2011). Much of the previous work on
parental mediation has neglected the role that children play both in mediation
practices applied by their parents and the effectiveness of these practices (Van den
Bulck, Custers, & Nelissen, 2016).
During adolescence in particular, parental mediation is assumed to be less
effective due to adolescents’ increased need for autonomy and resistance to
parental authority (Van Petegem, Vansteenkiste, Soenens, Beyers, & Aelterman,
2015). Still, researchers acknowledge that parents remain the primary socializa-
tion agent in adolescence (Otten, Engels, van de Ven, & Bricker, 2007) and only
a limited number of studies have addressed parental mediation in adolescence
(Valkenburg, Piotrowski, Hermanns, & De Leeuw, 2013). Parental mediation is
therefore best considered as a dynamic process in which the child is not a mere
receptor of parental practices, but also an active agent in shaping the socializa-
tion process and its outcomes. Past research has examined this bi-directionality
of child socialization (Darling, Cumsille, & Martínez, 2007; Parkin & Kuczynski,
2012; Shastri, 2015), stating that children have a substantial role in shaping the
process and end state (Shastri, 2015); still, there is little empirical evidence of
how this dynamic plays out in the field of parental mediation of adolescents’
Internet use, which requires domain-specific parenting. To investigate this
dynamic, it is vital that both the child’s and parental perspectives are taken
into account—for example, how parents adapt their mediation practices to the
perceived ability of their child to self-regulate (Mitchell, Finkelhor, & Wolak,
2005; Padilla-Walker, Coyne, Fraser, Dyer, & Yorgason, 2012), and that the
effectiveness of parental mediation depends on the child’s willingness to obey
(Livingstone & Bober, 2004).
In this study, it is argued that children’s acceptance of parental authority is a key factor
in successful adolescent-parental mediation. This goes beyond prior research investigat-
ing the direct relationship between parental mediation and behavioral effects.
Specifically, structural equation modeling is used to investigate how parents’ commu-
nication with their child about his or her Internet use is linked to the child’s acceptance of
parental authority in this area, and how this in turn is linked to the child’s social media
behavior. To combine the parental and child’s point of view, triadic data are used: within
each participating family, an adolescent (aged 13 to 18), a mother and a father were
questioned.
As a behavioral outcome, we investigate whether children’s acceptance of par-
ental authority is related to social media behavior. Specifically, the study focuses on
the frequency of social media usage and willingness to add strangers on social
network sites. Adding strangers online is a common behavior, with approximately
fifty percent of young people having already added strangers online (Livingstone &
Smith, 2014). A prior study in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium, where the
current study took place, found that one in five young people aged 14 to 19
consider it acceptable to add complete strangers to one’s online social network
(Vandoninck, d’Haenens, De Cock, & Donoso, 2011).
2 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
Theoretical Framework
Parental Mediation Strategies in Adolescence. Parental mediation research has
often focused on different types that parents use to deal with their children’s
media usage. Traditionally, three parental mediation strategies are discerned: “co-
use” refers to parents and children watching media together, without the
necessity to discuss its content (Livingstone & Helsper, 2008). This strategy is
most likely adopted for television use, and applied less to online media.
“Restrictive mediation” refers to the parents controlling both the amount of time
children spend on media and the type of content they come into contact with
(Nikken & Jansz, 2014). “Active mediation” entails discussing media content, in
which critical comments are given or content is explained (Nikken & Jansz,
2014). Due to the emerging popularity of online content, Nikken and Jansz
(2014) added a fourth strategy, “supervision,” which refers to parents
supervising their children’s media usage. This differs from co-use in that the
parents do not watch together with their children, but still keep an eye on their
children’s media usage while doing household activities. In empirical research,
supervision was more common among parents of young children (Nikken &
Jansz, 2014). In most academic research, researchers conclude that active
media mediation is more effective, compared to restrictive techniques
(Valkenburg et al., 2013).
Most of the parental mediation research has focused on children, as academic research
often assumes that parents of adolescents lose the effect on their children (Valkenburg
et al., 2013). This is mostly attributed to an increased need of children for autonomy that
occurs in adolescence, which results in an increasing sense of freedom and interpersonal
distance from the parents (Van Petegem et al., 2015). Still, qualitative research with
parents of an adolescent child has indicated that parents remain motivated to be involved
intheir adolescent’s Internet useduetoconcerns for potential risks, suchas cyberbullying,
excessive time online, privacy issues, or contact with strangers (Symons, Ponnet,
Walrave, & Heirman, 2017). To compensate for the increasing need for autonomy,
parental mediation styles that were effective during childhood are progressively replaced
by other, more age-appropriate practices. First, parents of older adolescents rely more on
active mediation techniques compared to parents of younger children (Livingstone &
Helsper, 2008). Second, studies have found that parents often engage in a strategy which
is labeled as “deference,” or “sideline parenting” (Padilla-Walker et al., 2012; Symons
et al., 2017b). In this strategy, parents actively choose not to intervene and grant auton-
omy to their child as long as the media influence does not negatively impact the child
(Padilla-Walker et al., 2012). In other words, parents stay close to intervene when
necessary, but grant the child increasing privacy and autonomy (Symons et al., 2017b).
These insights indicate that the division between active and restrictive parental mediation
styles might be less relevant for studies on adolescents’ media usage.
Symons et al./Parent-Child Communication about Internet Use 3
Open Communication Styles. Another perspective to investigate how parents
deal with their children’s media usage is the communication style by which they
convey their rules and guidance. In other words, not only does the type of parental
mediation strategy lead to positive results in children’s media behavior, but also the
ways in which these rules and guidance are communicated (Valkenburg et al.,
2013). This statement is supported by the self-determination theory (SDT, Deci &
Ryan, 2012). A core concept within SDT is “autonomy,” which refers to a universal,
significant human capacity to act in a volitional manner (Soenens & Vansteenkiste,
2010, p. 76). Following the SDT, successful parenting is associated with autonomy
support (Joussemet, Landry, & Koestner, 2008). Applied to parental mediation
theory, the SDT suggests that both active as well as restrictive mediation can be
effective, so long as it is done in an open, autonomy-supportive way (Valkenburg
et al., 2013).
Additional theoretical support for the effectiveness of open communication can
be found in the Family Communication Patterns Theory (FCPT), which classifies
family communication along its orientation on two dimensions. The first dimension
is “conversation orientation,” referring to the degree to which parents maintain
a climate of open communication where every family member is encouraged to
participate in unrestrained interaction. The second dimension is “conformity orien-
tation,” or the degree to which the family is viewed as cohesive and hierarchical
(Koerner & Schrodt, 2014). Family communication patterns have a profound effect
on the child’s cognitive, behavioral, and emotional outcomes; a meta-analysis of 56
studies found that the average effect of conversation orientation is stronger than the
effect of conformity orientation, and that this is especially true concerning effects on
psychosocial outcomes (Schrodt, Witt, & Messersmith, 2008).
In essence, the general health and wellbeing of children is highest in the context
of an open, unrestrained family communication climate. Various studies have
confirmed the effectiveness of open parent-child communication for behavioral
and psychosocial child adjustment (Ponnet, Wouters, Goedemé, & Mortelmans,
2016; Yu et al., 2006). Given the above-mentioned insights, this study will not
further focus on the classic division between active and restrictive parental media-
tion, but investigate the importance of open familial communication cited by
studies on family communication and self-determination theory.
Acceptance of Parental Authority. Despite that parents communicate with their
teenage children on their family standards on media usage, adolescents are not
always inclined to comply with these standards (Valkenburg et al., 2013) and can
even modify or respond to them (Van den Bulck et al., 2016). In this view, children
are seen as active agents who participate in their parents’ media guidance (Nelissen
& Van den Bulck, 2018). This may be even more true for older children.
When looking at family communication in general, younger children tend to agr
ee
with parental intervention, while older children have a more complex view on the
legitimacy of parental authority (Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2010). For an adolescent to
4 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
follow parental advice, his or her willingness to comply with their directions will
become increasingly important; this willingness constitutes the adolescent’s accep-
tance of parental authority (Yaffe, 2013), which is considered an important factor in
terms of child socialization (Darling et al., 2007; Kuhn, Mai Phan, & Laird, 2014).
The acceptance of parental authority can be defined as “the extent to which
parents’ assertion of control over an area is believed to be a natural, appropriate
extension of their role as parents” (Darling et al., 2007, p. 299). Parental
authority
becomes particularly relevant during adolescence, a period marked by
a renegotiation of the boundaries between personal autonomy and parental author-
ity. Therefore, the acceptance of parental authority is domain-specific, meaning that
it depends on the issue that is at stake (Yaffe, 2013). Parental authority is typically
more accepted when it concerns issues that are linked to health and safety (the
prudential domain), social conventions, and moral concerns, while it is the least
accepted when it concerns issues that are perceived as personal, such as friendships
and leisure activities (Smetana, Crean, & Campione-Barr, 2005; Smetana, Metzger,
Gettman, & Campione-Barr, 2006).
Conflicts over parental authority are most likely to occur over matters that are
“multi-faceted,” covering multiple domains and considered personal by the ado-
lescent but which parents perceive to be related to health and safety, morality, or
social conventions, and therefore domains where they can and should intervene
(Assadi, Smetana, Shahmansouri, & Mohammadi, 2011; Smetana et al., 2005). In
this study, we focus on the domain of social media usage and argue that
adolescents’ acceptance of parental authority on social media usage can be
associated with the extent to which parents use open communication.
Hypothesis Development
To investigate the association between open parental communication and accept-
ing authority, we differentiate between mothers’ and fathers’ open communication
styles. This is in line with previous research that demonstrated that mothers and
fathers tend to report different parenting styles (McKinney & Renk, 2008). Early
research on parenting often focused on mothers, who were found to spend more
time with their children (Phares, Fields, & Kamboukos, 2009), but more recently,
studies have acknowledged the importance of fathers in parenting styles with regard
to media (Vanwesenbeeck, Ponnet, Walrave, & Van Ouytsel, 2018). Still, there are
reasons to believe that parents differ in communication styles. Mothers are more
involved in parental mediation of Internet use compared to fathers (Symons, Ponnet,
Emmery, Walrave, & Heirman, 2017), and their Internet parenting style shows more
warmth in terms of support and communication compared to fathers (Valcke, Bonte,
De Wever, & Rots, 2010).
Adolescents’ increased need for autonomy from their parents may affect parent-child
communication in this period. In a study among 13- to 17-year-olds, the reported
openness of communication with parents was found to decline with age (Jackson,
Symons et al./Parent-Child Communication about Internet Use 5
Bijstra, Oostra, & Bosma, 1998). A longitudinal study following adolescents from age 12
to 19 found a decline in communication in early adolescence which, remained at a low,
stable level for boys while intensifying again for girls later in adolescence (Keijsers &
Poulin, 2013). Specifically in the field of Internet use, a study found that children aged 10
to 16 were more inclined to obey their parents and accept restrictions on Internet use in
the context of an open parent-child communication style (Byrne & Lee, 2011).
By establishing open communication with their child about his or her internet
use, parents may create a context in which the child is more inclined to accept
parental authority in this field, which in turn offers parents more opportunities to
support their children in becoming safe and responsible Internet users. The SDT
provides a theoretical foundation for this statement: when parents support their
children’s autonomy, the internalization of rules and values is more likely, and
adolescents will be motivated to comply with their parents’ rules and values
(Soenens, Vansteenkiste, & Niemiec, 2009). On the other hand, closed commu-
nication styles can lead to a rejection of parental authority, which does not support
internalization of rules. This can be further supported by reactance theory (Brehm,
1966): adolescents may show adversity toward their parents when they believe that
their autonomy is being threatened (Meeus, Beyens, Geusens, Sodermans, &
Beullens, 2018). A certain degree of reactance is normal in the still-developing
adolescent brain; however, the level of reactance can depend on the type of
communication used by parents (Byrne & Lee, 2011; Valkenburg et al., 2013). If
a parent does not communicate to adolescent children in an open way about their
Internet mediation, the children may perceive their parents’ authority to be illegiti-
mate (Meeus et al., 2018).
Based on the theory and research reviewed above, the following hypotheses are
formulated:
H1: Open mother-child communication about the adolescent’s Internet use is
positively associated with the adolescent’s acceptance of parental authority on
Internet use.
H2: Open father-child communication about the adolescent’s Internet use is
positively associated with the adolescent’s acceptance of parental authority on
Internet use.
As adolescents grow older, the Internet increasingly becomes a personal space in
which they make new friends, develop relationships, and bond with existing friends
(Boyd, 2014; Valkenburg & Peter, 2011). The “friending behavior” of adolescents
on social network sites (SNS) can be considered an essential aspect of adolescents’
online safety and privacy management (Heirman et al., 2016): the behavior is a risk
in itself in terms of online grooming, and it is linked with problematic online
experiences, such as cyberbullying perpetration and victimization (Gámez-
Guadix, Borrajo, & Almendros, 2016). Still, the adolescent and the parent might
6 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
have conflicting ideas on the amount of parental authority that is appropriate
regarding online friending behavior. Consequently, when adolescents feel that the
exercised parental authority threatens their autonomy, they may be more likely to
perform the behaviors prohibited by their parents (Valkenburg et al., 2013). The
present study looks at the frequency of SNS usage and the frequency with which
online stranger contact occurs, which enables differentiation of the extent to which
the adolescent engages in potentially risky online behavior.
This assumption leads to the following hypotheses:
H3: The adolescent’s acceptance of parental authority on Internet use is nega-
tively associated with the amount of time spent on SNS.
H4: The adolescent’s acceptance of parental authority on Internet use is nega-
tively associated with having online contacts with strangers.
H5: The relationship between both open communication styles and adding
strangers online is mediated by the adolescents’ acceptance of parental
authority.
In addition to the hypotheses mentioned-above, we assume that the amount of
time spend on a social network site is positively related to adding strangers. The
impact of stranger acceptance on adolescents’ obedience to parental authority is
also investigated, to verify whether the amount of time spend on a social network
site acts as a (partial) mediator for the direct effect between accepting parental
authority and adding strangers on the social network site.
Based on the aforementioned hypotheses, we developed the conceptual frame-
work shown in Figure 1.
Participants
This study is part of a large project focusing on children, families, and social
media usage and was conducted in Flanders, the northern, Dutch-speaking region
of Belgium. Data was collected between December 2015 and February 2016, with
the help of undergraduate students from the Higher Education Institution. Prior to
the start of the study, the procedure was approved by the ethics committee of the
University of Antwerp.
In this study, data was gathered from different family members. When using
multi-actor data, the acquired data often have a high rate of missing cases due to
a non-response (Kalmijn & Liefbroer, 2011). Due to this consideration, the project
employed a non-probabilistic sampling design. Newly formed families were only
Symons et al./Parent-Child Communication about Internet Use 7
included in the survey, if both partners had lived together for at least three years
prior to the survey.
For families with multiple children within the target age, the parents were asked
to complete the survey with one of their children in mind. The parents were free to
choose which child they took as the focal child, however, the parents were asked to
align with each other, so that both father and mother filled in the survey with the
same child in mind. Participants were recruited with the help of 81 undergraduate
students. Each student distributed eight envelopes among families with at least one
child between 13 and 18 years old. As a result, 648 families were asked to
participate in this study. Participating families received an envelope with three
questionnaires, one for each participating family member.
Along with the questionnaire, each family member received a plain-language state-
ment and was asked to fill in an informed consent form. The questionnaire started by
instructing the participants to fill in the questionnaire individually and to not discuss it
with other family members. To assure the participants’ privacy, each received
a sealable envelope for their completed questionnaire. The participants were then
asked to send back the three sealed envelopes in a stamped, self-addressed envelope.
A code was included on the back of each questionnaire. When analyzing the data, the
researcher could identify members of the same family using this code.
In total, 357 families (adolescents aged 13 to 18, M = 15.73; SD = 1.50) correctly
filled out each of the three questionnaires, with 54.9% of the families (n = 196)
including a female adolescent. The mothers were aged 31 to 59 years (M = 44.19;
Figure 1
Proposed Model
Contact with
strangers on SNS
(child report)
Open father-child
communication
(father report)
Open mother-child
communication
(mother report)
Accepting
authority
(child report)
H1
H2
H3
Frequency of
SNS usage
(child report)
H4
8 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
SD = 4.72). The fathers were aged 31 to 70 years (M = 46.67; SD = 5.65). All
adolescents reported access to a device at home to go on the Internet; the majority
of the adolescents (98.9%, n = 351) reported having a smartphone, and 92.1% (n
= 257) reported having a profile on a social network site.
Measures
Table 1 gives an overview of all variables and the associated descriptive statistics.
Open Parent-Child Communication. Open parent-child communication was
measured among mothers and fathers using a three-item scale, which was based on
the widely used open-parent-child communication scale (Barnes & Olson, 1985;
Ponnet et al., 2013). The items in the questionnaire (see Table 1) were adjusted to the
context of online communication. All items were scored on a six-point scale, ranging
from “Totally disagree” to “Totally agree.” The scale showed internal consistency for
both mothers (Cronbach’s alpha = .91) and fathers (Cronbach’s alpha = .90).
Acceptance of Parental Authority. Three items (See Table 1) were derived from
a study by Van Rooij and van den Eijnden (2007) and presented to the adolescent
for completion. The items were answered on a six-point Likert, ranging scale from
“Totally disagree” to “Totally agree.” The scale had good internal consistency, with
Cronbach’s alpha = .81.
Contact with Strangers on SNS. Three items were used to measure whether
adolescents previously had contact with strangers on social network sites (Lobe,
Livingstone, Ólafsson, & Vodeb, 2011). The respondents were asked to indicate on
a five-point Likert scale how often they engaged in three behaviors, from “Never” to
“Very often”: (1) having accepted a friend request from someone they do not know,
(2) having sent a friend request to someone they never met in person, and (3) having
sent contact details to someone never met in person. In terms of reliability, the scale
proved acceptable consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha = .69.
Frequency of SNS Usage. Respondents were asked how often they visited SNS
on a nine-point Likert scale, going from “never” to “more than seven times a day”.
Data Analyses
Data was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with maximum
likelihood estimation in Mplus 6.11 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2012). First, we
built a measurement model and examined whether the observed variables provided
a reliable reflection of the latent variables. Second, we estimated a structural model
with both parental views on communication quality (mother/father) as exogenous
Symons et al./Parent-Child Communication about Internet Use 9
variables as well as accepting authority and adding strangers on social network sites
as endogenous variables.
The child’s age and gender were included in the structural model as covariates. In
addition, both maternal and paternal age were included as a covariate.
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics of Key Variable Indicators
M SD Range
Open mother-child communication (mother report)
Item1: I am happy with the way my child and I discuss his/her
internet usage
4.47 1.11 1-6
Item2: I find it easy to talk with my child about his/her internet
usage
4.64 1.14 1-6
Item3: My child discusses openly what she/he sees, does and
reads on the internet
4.35 1.23 1-6
Open father-child communication (father report)
Item1: I am happy with the way my child and I discuss his/her
internet usage
4.40 1.15 1-6
Item2: I find it easy to talk with my child about his/her internet
usage
4.50 1.17 1-6
Item3: My child discusses openly what she/he sees, does and
reads on the internet
4.23 1.28 1-6
Accepting authority (child report)
Item1: It think it’s okay that my parents set rules on internet
usage
4.88 1.22 1-6
Item2: I agree with the rules that my parents set for my internet
usage
4.77 1.23 1-6
Item3: I follow the rules that my parents set for my internet
usage
4.90 1.22 1-6
Contact with strangers on SNS (child report)
Item1: Accepted a friend request from someone I do not know 1.71 .82 1–5
Item2: Added people that I did not meet in person 1.95 .94 1–5
Item3: Sent contact information to someone that I have never
met personally
1.15 .52 1–5
SNS usage frequency
Item1 How often do you use social network sites 5.29 1.91 1–9
10 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
Measurement Model
The initial measurement model provided a good fit to the data: χ2(56): 75.12,
p < .001, CFI = .99, RMSEA = .041 (CI:.007-.063), SRMR = .049. All factor
loadings were greater than .57 and were found significant. Correlations among
the latent variables in the path model can be found in Table 2. A closer look at
the measurement model revealed a correlation between open parental commu-
nication for mothers and for fathers (r = .37, p < .01). In our proposed model,
these variables were integrated as separate variables. To check whether this
assumption holds, we compared a model in which the interdependent constructs
were modeled separately to a model combined into a single latent construct. The
result of the Chi-square difference test indicated that combining both constructs
on open parental communication decreased the fit significantly, χ2(1) = 46, p
< .01. Therefore, both the father’s and mother’s point of view were included as
separate variables. Nevertheless, these variables were allowed to correlate in the
structural model.
Structural Model
Figure 2 shows the final structural model. This model provided a good fit to the data:
χ2(97): 157.95, p < .001, CFI = .96, RMSEA = .056 (CI: .040-.072), SRMR = .052. Our
analyses revealed that the mother’s open communication was positively associated
with the adolescent’s acceptation of authority (β = .19, p < . 05), confirming H1. In
other words, when a mother maintains open communication on Internet usage, her
child is more likely to accept parental rules on Internet usage. Despite the expectations
formulated in H2, we could not confirm that the father’s open communication was
associated with the adolescent’s acceptance of authority (β = .14, ns.).
Following H3, we confirmed a negative relationship between acceptance of
authority and the amount of time spent on a social network site (β = − .16, p < .
Table 2
Correlations among the Latent Constructs
1 2 3 4 5
1 Age 1
2 Open communication (mother) .06 1
3 Open communication (father) .05 .37** 1
4 Accepting authority (child) −.13* .25** .18** 1
5 Adding strangers on SNS .25** −.12* −.08 −.33** 1
*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001
Symons et al./Parent-Child Communication about Internet Use 11
05). In other words, adolescents who do not accept their parents’ authority on
Internet usage are more likely to report spending more time on social network
sites. In H4, we expected a negative relationship between accepting parental
authority and having contact with strangers on social network sites; this assumption
was also confirmed (β = − .34, p < .001). An adolescent who accepts parental rules
on Internet usage is less likely to have contact with strangers on social network sites.
Finally, the amount of time spent on a social network site was significantly related
with having contact with strangers on social network sites (β = .22, p < .001).
Furthermore, no indirect effects were found with regard to accepting parental
authority and adding strangers on social network sites (β = .04, ns).
We were also interested in the direct and indirect effects of open parental
communication and adding strangers on social network sites. In a model without
acceptance of authority, a direct significant relationship between the mother’s open
communication and adding strangers was found (β = − .18, p < .05). However, in
our structural model, we did not establish a direct significant path between parental
open communication and adding strangers on social network sites (mother:
β = − .07, ns; father: β = .00, ns); nor did we establish any indirect effects via
acceptance of authority (mother: β = − .05, ns; father: β = − .05., ns). As a conse-
quence, H5 was rejected.
Figure 2
Structural Model
Contact with
strangers on SNS
(child report)
Open father-child
communication
(father report)
Open mother-child
communication
(mother report)
Accepting
authority
(child report)
it1 it2 it3
it1 it2 it3
it1 it2 it3
it1 it2 it3
R² = .10
R² = .31
Age
.92 .87 .78
.73
.78
.76
.80 .58.75
.87
.92 .84
e e e
e
ee e
e e e
ee
.37***
.19*
-.34***
-.16*
.22**
.18**
Frequency of SNS usage
(child report)
12 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
The child’s gender, the mother’s age, and the father’s age were not associated
with any of the variables in the model. The adolescent’s age was significantly
associated with having contact with strangers on SNS (β = .24, p < .005), indicating
that older adolescents are more likely to add or stay in contact with people that they
have never met in real life. Neither the child’s nor the parents’ age were related to
parental authority or parental open communication.
This study empirically substantiates the proposition that parental mediation of
adolescent Internet use is a dynamic process in which the adolescent’s acceptance
of parental authority is a key factor. The use of triadic data with a report from the
mother, the father, and a child aged 13 to 18 offers good opportunities for studying
how such parent-child interactions play out. Structural equation modeling provided
support for a model, in which parents’ open communication with their child about
his or her Internet use enhances safe Internet use, and the mediating role of the
adolescent’s increases acceptance of parental authority. This was only true, how-
ever, regarding the mother’s communication with the child, not the father’s.
The adolescents’ acceptance of parental authority played an important role in
whether adolescents had contact with strangers via social network sites and the
amount of time spent on social media. This is in accordance with theoretical
insights from the reactance theory, stating that if children feel threatened in their
autonomy (Brehm, 1966), they are less likely to comply with the values and rules
provided by their parents. Thus, while studies suggest that parents engage less in
parental mediation as the child gets older (Sonck, Nikken, & de Haan, 2013;
Symons et al., 2017b), parents still have a significant role to play in terms of
enhancing safe Internet behavior and will have more opportunities for doing so
when the child accepts their authority, as suggested by the perceived parental
media mediation theory (Valkenburg et al., 2013). It is important to point out that
many online risks become more prevalent during adolescence. For example, cyber-
bullying behavior has its peak between 12 and 15 years, while online sex-related
harassment risks are lower for young adolescents, and higher for older adolescents
(Livingstone & Smith, 2014). Thus, while the Internet and especially social media
can be considered part of the personal domain of young people, it clearly also
includes aspects that legitimize parental involvement.
Based on SDT and the FCPT, parents’ open communication with their child over
the latter’s Internet use was hypothesized to be associated with the child’s accep-
tance of parental authority. This hypothesis was confirmed regarding communica-
tion by the mother, but not by the father. It is not clear why communication with the
father was not a significant factor, but prior studies typically point out that fathers
take up a lesser role in child–rearing, including during adolescence (Phares et al.,
2009), and that adolescents are more likely to turn to their mother for discussing
Symons et al./Parent-Child Communication about Internet Use 13
problems than their father (Ackard, Neumark-Sztainer, Story, & Perry, 2006).
Mothers have also been found to be more involved in Internet parenting compared
to fathers (Valcke et al., 2010). Our finding underscores the importance of integrat-
ing mothers’ and fathers’ disparate communication styles. These results are further
supported by Byrne and Lee (2011), who found that open communication with
parents predicted less resistance toward parental strategies for enhancing safe
Internet use among 10- to 16-year-olds. The results also confirm a qualitative
study with parents of a child aged 13 to 18 that found open communication with
the child plays a key role in successful parental mediation (Symons et al., 2017a).
While the results of this study suggest that adolescents’ acceptance of parental
authority is an important missing link in studies on parental mediation, we acknowl-
edge that there are other possible pathways between parent-child communication
and online behavior. One possibility is that open communication stimulates chil-
dren to disclose more to their parents, who in turn become better informed so that
they can intervene if necessary. Parental knowledge of a child’s behavior is
a protective factor against problem behavior, and such knowledge stems more
from open parent-child communication than from parents’ monitoring practices
(Kerr, Stattin, & Burk, 2010). Specifically in the field of Internet use, this commu-
nication can stimulate the child to disclose negative online experiences, such as
cyberbullying (Cerna, Machackova, & Dedkova, 2016). Thus, open parental com-
munication on Internet use can not only improve the child’s acceptance of parental
authority, but also improve parents’ awareness of potential needs.
Further, it is possible that parents who apply an open communication style also
engage in different Internet mediation strategies, which in turn results in different
Internet use outcomes. Mediation strategies tend to reflect general family processes:
for example, parents who engage more in open communication in general are also
more likely to engage in critical discussions of media content (Fujioka & Austin, 2002).
Several limitations should be taken into account. First, the study’s design is
sensitive for sampling bias, as a non-probabilistic sampling design was used.
Although this approach was deliberately followed to limit non-responses associated
with multi-actor data, it does limit the generalizability of the study findings.
Furthermore, a study on non-response of multi-actor data showed that participation
was more likely when the relationship between the parent and the child was better
(Kalmijn & Liefbroer, 2011). Such selective respondent participation may have
biased the results. Second, our study only included two-parent families. This
approach was followed to gather insight on the use of open communication from
both the mother and the father, as many studies either focus only on the mother or
average the scores of both parents (Ponnet et al., 2013).
In our sample, newly-formed families were included only if the parents had lived
together for at least three years, due to the high prevalence of newly blended
families in the study’s country. Nevertheless, “atypical” families, including one-
parent families or families with same-gender parents, were not included. Overall, it
is recommended that future research pay attention to these family types. Third, the
14 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
study makes use of a cross-sectional design, which implies that there are limitations
in terms of establishing causality. We acknowledge that parents’ communication
with their adolescent child can be affected by the child’s behavior; hence our
reversing the direction of causality suggested in the model. This effect is also
referred to as the “child-effect” and is largely under-investigated (Mascheroni,
Ponte, & Jorge, 2018; Van den Bulck et al., 2016).
Future research could investigate how the child-effect is related to acceptance of
parental authority and risk behavior associated with the use of social media (i.e.,
adding strangers on social media). Finally, our study focused on the frequency of
social media usage and adding strangers on social media. However, we did not
differentiate in the types of strangers added by the participants, nor did we focus on
other types of contact risks that appear on social media. For instance, future
research should focus on contact risks like sexting via social media or privacy
concerns related to online self-disclosure via social media.
Despite these limitations, the study offers valuable new insights in the field of
parental mediation of adolescents’ Internet use. Taken together, the study under-
lines the importance of taking into account the role of the child in parental media-
tion, as mediation outcomes are contingent on a dynamic parent-child interplay.
Currently, there is still a lack of research incorporating the viewpoint of the child as
well as the parent(s), which impedes the understanding of such dynamics.
None of the authors report any conflict of interest regarding the paper.
The study was funded by the Research Fund of University College Odisee and the
authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Research Fund. The work of Joris
Van Ouytsel is supported by the Research Foundation – Flanders. The study design,
data collection, analysis, interpretation of the data, writing of the report and the
decision to submit the article for publication were the sole responsibility of the
authors and were in no way influenced by the funding institutions.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0038374
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0907568211406456
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0907568211406456
http://dx.doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2006.34.10.1297
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Theoretical Framework
Parental Mediation Strategies in Adolescence
Open Communication Styles
Acceptance of Parental Authority
Hypothesis Development
Method
Participants
Measures
Open Parent-Child Communication
Acceptance of Parental Authority
Contact with Strangers on SNS
Frequency of SNS Usage
Data Analyses
Results
Measurement Model
Structural Model
Discussion
Disclosure statement
Funding
References
According to Bummdumal,” Traditionally, parental authority was often defined by distance, punishment, and dominance. The authority figure saw him- or herself as the sole and absolute source of power, accountable to no one, and holding no responsibility for escalation in the interaction with the child. Disciplinary harshness was viewed solely as a function of the child’s opposition” (Omer et al. 194).
I agree with the author because I come from a similar background. Which such memories have negatively impacted my life, and it leads to a very dark chapter. From the cultural experience as an African, It was taboo to communicate openly or share your thoughts or goals with a parent. The parent believed that if a child is given the platform to speak their mind or expressed a dislike would lead to that child’s measuring arm with the parent. It came from the infrequent experience of a parent-child bond. As an African child, our parents’ knowledge of the parent-child bond was prone to maintaining fear between the child and parent or a family member. There was limited knowledge about bonding with the child and parent. The parent was responsible for providing the basic needs of the child. Such as food, health, clothing, and shelter. Growing up as a child, I got abused almost every day physically, emotionally, and mentally. I didn’t know the meaning of parental love towards me as a child. There were straight boundaries set by parents. Beating and harsh punishment were the order of the day for the child. Grieve and agony soaked in my heart as a little girl.
There was not enough attention showed to me as a child. Such experience had a downplay tour on life while growing up. There was little affection given to the child to feel any security and belonging. Being a parent and learning each day about showing quality love and providing the best care to your child. When I was an adolescent, not something I would like to share with my teenage daughter. I was not giving the opportunity when it came to making decisions or choices. My mother was mostly the only person that had the authority to make choices and decisions. I never did feel safe or protected all my childhood life, even till today’s date. My mother and I still have trouble with bonding together. As a parent, I feel like continuing in the same upbringing pattern will create a gap between the daughter and mother bond. The African parent mindset related to bonding with a child is far more different from European or American parents.” the anchoring function reflects the
As a parent, it is our responsibility to protect, guide, and foster our children ‘s growth. If the child is left unattended, misplaced in any aspect of their life will devastate their future. Good parenting is necessary at all times. With advanced technology and social media, parents seem to be more careful about who becomes friends. Due to the high demand for internet usage among teenagers, parents have to increase their interpersonal relationships and communication skills. Appropriate use of the internet will reduce the child from getting into a dangerous pursuit with cyberbullying, romantic relationships, or risky activities. Although there are positive things and resources on the internet that help build and enhance the child’s mind. According to Symons, ” By establishing open communication with their child about his or her internet
use, parents may create a context in which the child
is more inclined to accept
parental authority in this field, which in turn offers parents more opportunities to
support their children in becoming safe and responsible Internet users” ( Symons et la …4). Every parent wants the best for their child, which may seem like the mother or father is too overprotective. At times, parents appear to be problematic in the mind of a child, or society sees the parent as intrusive. With regards to “The anchoring function reflects the safeguarding aspect of the parents’ role, by which they keep the child from venturing into dangerous waters.”( Omer et al ..195), I support the author’s view. Without the guidance of a parent in the child’s life, there will be so many mistakes and consequences that will envelop the child’s life as a whole.
There will be challenges in achieving this goal due to peer pressure and social media with teenagers.”According to Symons,” By establishing open communication with their child about his or her internet
use, parents may create a context in which the child is more inclined to accept
parental authority in this field, which in turn offers parents more opportunities to
support their children in becoming safe and responsible Internet users. As a parent, it is their responsibility to ensure the child’s safety and well-being are protected. One way to be successful is to create an open communication flow between the child and the parent. Maintaining a unique relationship of the parent-child bond is a big deal to the child’s mind. It may be bumpy at the beginning of the road, but it will all come to play in the best way with time and perseverance. According to Dornbusch,” in families with an involved
grandparent, adolescents are at less risk of anti-social behaviors (Omer et al., ..199)”. This statement is accurate, and grandparent plays a significant role in a teenagers life. With a grandparent’s presence in the home, it alleviates pressure on the mother or father. When you look at the world today, most parents are single and find it challenging to single-handle their child in working late and ensuring their children have all the basic needs. With the help of grandparents’ presence in the home, I will minimize fatigue and anxiety for the parent to function in career and domestic lifestyle. I Had the privilege of living with my grandparents. Because of their presence, being always around me help shift me to become the woman I am today. My grandparents put in so much time teaching me a modest life to be a unique person in society.
Title: ‘How to be good’: media representations of parenting. Authors: ASSARSSON, LISELOTT1 Source: Studies in the Education of Adults. Spring2011, Vol. 43 Issue 1, p78-92. 15p. Document Type: Article Subject Terms: PARENTING education Author-Supplied Keywords: adult learning Abstract: Expectations of parenting are highly prescribed and the media is an important channel for adults learning what this role entails. The pedagogical role of the media involves making judgements on what counts as valid and desirable parenting practices and suggest goals to be(come) the ‘good parent’ – a construct which appears to take no account of social inequalities, cultural diversity and complex social contexts. Our study focuses on idealised parenting in media settings and highlights the preferences and subject positions parents are expected to take. This identity work involves parents understanding their practices as the problem and learning new practices as the potential solution, which they need to initiate. The role of parenting experts is to position parents as responsible adults with the ability to make desired changes happen. Parents who refuse to develop the preferred skills risk appearing to be uninformed and ignorant. Located in this discourse parenting is a question of adult learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Database: EBSCO MegaFILE Full Text Keywords: Expectations of parenting are highly prescribed and the media is an important channel for adults learning what this role entails. The pedagogical role of the media involves making judgements on what counts as valid and desirable parenting practices and suggest goals to be(come) the ‘good parent’ — a construct which appears to take no account of social inequalities, cultural diversity and complex social contexts. Our study focuses on idealised parenting in media settings and highlights the preferences and subject positions parents are expected to take. This identity work involves parents understanding their practices as the problem and learning new practices as the potential solution, which they need to initiate. The role of parenting experts is to position parents as responsible adults with the ability to make desired changes happen. Parents who refuse to develop the preferred skills risk appearing to be uninformed and ignorant. Located in this discourse parenting is a question of adult learning. adult learning, governmentality, media, parenting, subject positioning Introduction Parenting is prominently featured in the mass communication media, which is evident in media settings that specialise in children, families and parents, and the many books, newspapers, magazines, and televison shows where parenting is discussed. These media settings create important aspects of learning parenting by focusing on how ‘good parenting’ is portrayed and negotiated in the media. To put it differently; how is ‘the good parent’ represented? We explore this theme through data drawn from two media settings, a magazine and a television show, to highlight norms, obligations and expectations relating to parenting practice. Parenting and the media In a discussion of popular culture Rose (1999a) claims that the media saturate people’s lives, ‘… it [the social and cultural context] inheres in each of us, maintained and reactivated constantly by the images that surround us — in advertising, on television, in newspapers and magazines, in the baby book’ (p. 213). The media distribute images and ideas of how to be a happy and well-functioning family. Advice on how to treat your child is a very common topic, sometimes given as tips in a magazine on how to get your child to sleep, other times as discussions in television shows that focus on how to deal with children’s behaviour. In these media practices, parenting is categorised, evaluated and corrected. Regardless of the genre, theme or dilemma that is at stake, norms and preferences concerning how to be a skilful parent are displayed. But at the same time, the opposite is also revealed, namely bad parenting’. Media practices display good as well as bad images of parenting, and these images can be seen as fashioning norms that function as frames of reference for how to be(come) good. Accordingly, parenting activities could be interpreted in terms of adult competence, where media settings are potential learning spaces for acquiring preferred knowledge and skills. Parenting and the media is not a new area of research, and studies have been made on the construction of gender (e.g. Benwell, 2002, 2004) as well as motherhood and fatherhood (Coates, 1997; Talbot, 1998; Lazar, 2000; Sunderland, 2000, 2004, 2006). In a study of UK and US magazines devoted to the topic of childcare, Sunderland (2006) argues that even though these magazines address parents in their titles, rather than mother or father, they still use stereotypical gendered representations in their articles and illustrations. Furthermore, Sunderland concludes that ‘the representation and address of fathers in these ‘parenting’ magazines are lagging behind actual, changing social practices’ (2006, p. 524). As such, childcare magazines can be seen as conservative in their views on parenting. Another media practice is parenting advice given on websites. Dolev and Zeedyk (2006) studied parenting advice on 20 websites a few months after the terrorist attack in New York in 2001. These websites show how happenings in society are expected to be handled in parent-child relations. They state that even when it comes to dealing with exceptional events, the media are there to guide parents: first, parents need to obtain professional help to handle extraordinary happenings, second, they are supposed to act on experts’ advice to succeed, third, parents are treated as a homogeneous group. In sum, parents are less knowledgeable than experts. In research on parenting and television much attention is focused on programmes like Supernanny, which many parents see as a source of ideas on childrearing (Miller, 2007). Programmes like these may be seen as edutainment — a combination of entertainment and education — in the sense that parents are to find the programme interesting and fun at the same time as they learn about topics such as how to deal with children’s health and development (see Sanders and Prinz, 2008). Lately, there has been an increasing interest in how adults learn from popular culture (Jarvis, 2005; Tisdell, 2008; Tisdell and Thompson, 2007; Wright and Sandlin, 2009). Research on adult education has focused on how popular culture is a resource for teaching in the classroom and as a vehicle of the development of critical media literacy (Tisdell and Thompson, 2007), while research on adult learning focuses on how popular culture works as a practice where ideas and representations are highlighted and made relevant in everyday lives of adults (cf. Jarvis, 2005; Wright and Sandlin, 2009)- Researchers have also addressed the relationship of entertainment and information combined with the positions given to experts concerning childrearing (cf. Connell-Carrick, 2006; Pramling, 2009). In spite of the interest in studies of parenting and family life in the media, there is a lack of detailed analysis on how parenting is represented (Sunderland, 2006). Governmentality and discursive practices Modern society and the subject can be discussed in terms of governmentality, which refers to indirect ways of structuring the field of possible action (Foucault, 1988, 1991). Thus, the state is not the only unit governing; subjects govern each other and themselves. Through acts of subjection, we regulate our conduct in accordance with certain expectations mediated through various channels, which shape the norms informing different social practices. As Rose (1998, 1999a, 1999b) claims, the governable subject is constructed in terms of the autonomy of the individual and the importance of making choices. This way of reasoning opens a space for advice and guidance from experts, for example, from human sciences such as psychology and from popular culture such as television shows and self-help material in books and magazines. As Rose puts it: ‘Selves unable to operate the imperative of choice are to be restored through therapy to the status of a choosing individual’ (1999a, p. 231). Subjects are supposed to be active, work hard and evaluate and compare themselves to others, including images in the media. In short, ideas on how to be a knowledgeable parent depend on expectations about parenting practice, which then shape patterns of preferred/non-preferred actions. This disciplining process is not to be seen as oppressive rather the subject is created and creates itself in relation to norms governing how to act. Governmentality is a way of understanding what rationalities of governance are applied in parenting and why certain positions seem to reoccur while others are excluded. Several studies have been conducted on governmentality and families. For instance, Popkewitz (2003) states that contemporary parents are supposed to be responsible and autonomous, but also collaborative; ‘the successful parent is a pedagogical one’ (p. 53). Home is no longer a setting where parents have the goal of preparing their children for school, rather it is a learning space (Rose, 1999b; Popkewitz, 2003). Moqvist (2003) claims that the contemporary child is construed in terms of individuality, respect, equality and competence. Parenting is described as a problematic relationship, and the mode for solving this is talking. Skilled parents are thus portrayed as understanding, reflecting and communicating. Millei and Lee (2007) argue in a similar way that ‘the smart parent’ is produced as a lifelong learner, responsible and informed. Accordingly, a particular parental role is construed and transformed into good parenting values, and alternative images are ignored. Furthermore, in studying the idea of schooling, McGowan (2005) discusses flexibility as a normalising strategy prominent in the transformation from a state-run institution into a community-run one. In this way, a legislated move can be identified where parents become actively responsible as community members in the process of schooling the child; they are the ones ensuring the governmental objective of education for all children. Moreover, Baez and Talburt (2008) analyse how the parent, child and school are construed in government documents. They argue that home is, in fact, established as a school, where parental and educational responsibilities are linked to each other. This implies that parents should provide children with appropriate educational activities to reinforce and make school activities more efficient. In this study, parenting is understood as a discursive practice. According to Foucault ‘… discursive practices are characterised by the delimitation of a field of objects, the definition of a legitimate perspective for the agent of knowledge, and the fixing of norms for the elaboration of concepts and theories. Thus each discursive practice implies a play of prescriptions that designate exclusions and choices’ (1977, p. 199). Everyday interaction creates regularities, displaying particular patterns of meaning, and the meaning of symbols becomes more or less ‘fixed’, producing normative regulations for thinking, acting and talking. These regularities work as guidelines, making ‘the order of things’ in specific contexts and settings visible. Furthermore, they become taken-for-granted frames of reference in the sense of social inclusion and exclusion, processes of classifying and justifying what is normal or deviant. Accordingly, the play of prescriptions can be discussed in terms of what is desirable and good versus what is non-preferable. Subjects are evaluated and distributed in terms of these norms and prescriptions. Discursive practices produce certain positions for subjects to assume, and being part of a discursive practice means speaking as a particular kind of subject. As adults, we participate in several activities and settings every day, like being partner, employee, friend, sister and parent. The identity position one takes and/or is positioned into may be of a relatively stable character, but it may also vary within the activity (Aronsson, 1998; Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998; Goffman, 1981). To make sense of images of parenting in the media and the discursive work that they do, we will use the concept of subject positioning as an analytical tool. This concept describes how people relate to other people, activities and discourses (Bamberg, 1997; Davies and Harré, 1990; Edley and Wetherell, 1997), and it underlines identity as an activity. Being positioned or entering into a subject position means gaining access to conceptual repertoires and ways of seeing and understanding the activities, where the participants are offered resources to deal with what happens (Lagenhove and Harré, 1999). People are not fixed to one position, rather they engage in many activities and relations, and thus enter different subject positions. How to act, or where and when to act, is not something the subject solely does by him/herself, rather ‘… there are patterns that he finds in his culture and which are proposed, suggested and imposed on him by culture, his society and his social group’ (Foucault, 1988, p. 11). The subject’s position and the meaning of this position are negotiated by using patterns and meanings from other activities. For instance, what it means to be a father, dentist, game player or student is related to similar patterns across activities and practices. In terms of governmentality, it could be claimed that how to act in these subject positions is proposed, suggested and imposed, as well as adjusted, negotiated and challenged by the subject. In other words, how to act in social life is guided by notions of normalities that circulate in the society (Rose, 1999a), as well as regulations and rules negotiated in the situation at hand (Goffman, 1974). In this study the research focuses on the disciplining and governmentality of family life as potentially influenced by media practices and expectations. We present a detailed analysis of interactional data, drawing on two media settings, which highlight the fashioning of norms and discipline techniques aimed at parents in the media. Research strategy and data We draw on empirical material from two media settings, an American magazine and a Swedish television show. Instead of a comparative approach, we use them as complementary media practices in order to understand connectedness and relationships rather than particularities and discontinuities (see Sparrman and Aarsand, 2009). The first setting is the magazine L.A. Parent (City Edition). This was investigated over the course of one year (July 2008-June 2009), 12 issues in all. L.A. Parent, a monthly magazine that is available in libraries and stores, was chosen because it has a huge audience and is free, appeals to all English speaking/reading parents living in the Los Angeles area regardless of social class, gender, generation or ethnicity, is a magazine that calls itself ‘parent’, and, finally, was recommended to us as newcomers to the Los Angeles area by friends, colleagues, teachers and librarians. Approximately 50 per cent of its content is advertisements relating to childcare and parenting, products and services like schools, museums, exhibitions, medical care and a calendar of the month. The rest consists of articles, columns and notes that deal with aspects of being parents. The magazines are also available at http://losangeles.parenthood.com/. The second setting is the Swedish television show A Case for Louise (‘Ett fall for Louise’) that was broadcast by the national television company during the autumn of 2009 and had 531 000 viewers.[1] This show was chosen because of its focus on what is labelled as problematic parenting and is produced in another national setting that is also familiar to us. The basis of the show is that families with problems meet a prominent family therapist to help resolve their difficulties. Each show consists of a case where a child presents something s/he experiences as problematic in his/her family. The parents watch parts of the interview together with the psychologist who then presents the analysis to the family. In the next step, the expert gives the parents advice and recommendations on how to deal with the problems and become better parents. The show ends with a snapshot of everyday life some time afterwards where signs of change are identified, for instance, how parents spend more time with the family. The expert and the host of the show point out that they take the child’s perspective. More information about the show is available at http://svt.se/. In this study, we explore the media settings in terms of ‘communicational landscapes’, focusing on identifying patterns, constructions and functions of language (cf. Kress 2003). The analysis of parental representations concentrated on three aspects in the media material: * activity (which activities are put forward, what is supposed to be done?), * logic of reasoning (which naming styles, concepts, actors and objects are used?), and * subject positioning (what positions are made relevant and how?). We have read twelve magazine issues closely, concentrating on the front page, editor’s note, articles/themes (usually one or two for each issue), and recurrent sections where the columnists answer questions from the readers. A content log was made for each issue. The next step was to read the magazines again, this time from the logs with in-depth analysis of particular sections. When it comes to the six television shows, each was watched several times and the dialogues were transcribed. The transcriptions were then read several times, interpreted and analysed according to the above-mentioned three aspects. The transcriptions were translated into English. According to the discursive interest, competing as well as contradictory representations of parenting were noted with a view to finding nuances and variances. However, a pattern of parenting described in terms of involvement and improvement were identified. The following examples were chosen to illustrate this pattern. Becoming a better parent In our data, parenting is described as a multifaceted activity where parents are expected to look after their children’s health, wellbeing, mental and physical development, school activities, extracurricular activities and vacations. Parents are supposed to have a general overview and control over dangers and needs in their children’s lives, and are responsible for helping them succeed. In other words, being a good parent is being involved in the everyday life of your children (see Lareau, 2003). We argue that good parenting is accomplished through ongoing identity work, that is, displayed self-improvement and self-regulation, where the media stimulates and sustains this through correcting practices. According to L.A. Parent, parental involvement is an activity, a task in motion in the sense that demands on parenting change, for instance, as children mature. To enable the parents to evaluate whether they manage to sustain the preferred subject position, the magazine provides articles, tests’ and checklists where they can compare their performance to see how successful they are in their own parental practice. In our first example, we will investigate how this is produced through one of these checklists. Example 1: Improvement Heading: ‘Your parenting to-do list. There are no quick fixes, but you can be a better parent’# Place and time: L.A. Parent, March 2009, pp 16-17 1. Treat your kids with love and respect. · 2. Say “no” and mean it. · 3. Teach your kids to respect others. · 4. Watch what you say and do. · 5. Make sure your home is a safe and wonderful place. · 6. Try, try, try to decrease the yelling. · 7. Be as consistent, predictable and stable as you can. · 8. Don’t be a helicopter parent. · 9. Teach your kids to tolerate frustration, control their anger and verbalise their feelings effectively. · 10. Take care of yourself. * The headline is accompanied by a picture of a black man holding a black boy in his arms playfully upside down, and beside them a white woman cooking together with a white girl. This example starts with a heading telling the reader that parenting is constant work and a challenging activity for everybody. Moreover, the reader is informed that there are no simple answers or ways of doing this, there are ‘no quick fixes’ (headline); however, reading this ‘parenting to-do list’ will help. When parenting is conceptualised, described and discussed along these lines, it implies that adults are expected to make ‘better parenting’ a relevant issue in their everyday lives. Parenting is construed as a process where the main task is improvement of the adult’s behaviour. No matter how good you are, there is always more that can be done, ‘you can be a better parent’ (headline). Parenting is hard work and the goal is to practise, reflect, evaluate and adjust one’s own parenting. We can see how the advice makes a clear distinction between what could be called parental obligations and parental recommendations. Parental obligations are: to ‘teach’ kids to control themselves, tolerate frustration, control their anger and verbalise their feelings’ and to teach children ‘ to respect others’ (advice 3 and 9). Taking the responsibility for children developing social competence is a vital part of being the good parent, which is underlined by the word ‘teach’. This verb is used as part of a command that is neither negotiable nor questionable. As a concept, ‘teach’ connects to actors and activities in formal education, thus the importance of the present ‘curriculum’ is underlined. Hence, the child becomes the learning subject, expected to adjust to the claims being displayed, and the parent becomes the teacher, responsible for finding ways for children to develop the proper skills. Nonetheless, some advice in the list is formulated as recommendations, something to work on, construed in terms of almost unattainable yet important goals. This is done by signalling effort and ambition, ‘try, try, try to decrease the yelling’ (advice 6) and ‘be as consistent, predictable and stable as you can’ (advice 7). Yelling is presented as a common problem in families that must be curtailed even though it will not fully end. A parallel can be seen in the seventh piece of advice, where ‘consistency’, ‘predictability’ and ‘stability’ are important skills in parenting that are seen as hard to fulfil. Note, when parents work as hard as they can to reach the ideal, lack of success is not a problem. Parenting is shaped by making an effort, constantly practising to be better and developing the preferred competence. The image of parenting that is provided can be described in terms of caring, ‘treat your kids with love and respect’, and ‘make sure your home is a safe and wonderful place’ (advice 1 and 5) as well as being responsible, establishing everyday rules with prevailing possibilities and restrictions, ‘say no and mean it’ (advice 2). These items of advice address parents in terms of making them role models, emphasising that adults are responsible for their actions and have influence on their children’s lives, watch what you say and do’, ‘take care of yourself (advice 4 and 10). However, one piece of advice differs from the others — ‘don’t be a helicopter parent’ (advice 8). This implies overparenting — having children under constant surveillance, where the children tend to be given no responsibilities. The fact that helicopter parenting is not explained to the readers shows how much the notion is taken for granted. This has to be seen in light of the US debate on parents who oversee their children’s everyday lives in every way, which the media presents as very negative. It is the only piece of advice that is formulated in the negative. While parents are depicted as knowledgeable in relation to their children, they are simultaneously positioned as novices in relation to those with expertise. Thus, parents are portrayed as learning subjects, expected to be attentive and receptive to expert advice. Note that although the advice is framed as guidelines for parenting, only four (advice 1, 3, 8 and 9) of the ten items deal explicitly with such activities. The other six could easily work as examples of how to behave like a decent human being. The distinctions between parenting and other identities are blurred, yet they function as a resource for making adults put effort into improvement. Crossing the border: the problem of involvement According to our data, good parenting is about involvement, and, as we have seen, improvement is an important aspect of this; being involved has become ‘a regime of truth’ (Foucault, 1982). However, just as the involved parent is the frame of reference, the too-involved parent is identified as a problematic subject position. To further explore the construction of the good parent we take a closer look at the boundaries of involvement. Example 2: Too involved Heading: ‘Are we driving our kids crazy? Even well-intentioned parents can stress out their children’# Place: L.A. Parent, July 2008, pp 20-22 1. Despite our best intentions — or maybe even because of them — some of us parents are · 2. making our kids crazy. Clinically? No. But sometimes, even when we’re trying to do · 3. good, our efforts can have serious negative effects. Part of the problem could be stress · 4. from their academic, social, athletic and overscheduled lives. Kids’ complex social webs, · 5. school workload, extracurricular activities and family demands can be daunting. As · 6. Parents, we contribute to this. /… /Parents who get too involved with their kids’ social · 7. lives — for instance, micro-managing play dates — are one source of trouble. ‘When · 8. parents are too involved in their kids’ lives, the kids in turn lash out to authority figures at · 9. school because they are angry and don’t have a way to express their need for more · 10. space’ /… /Identifying ourselves as a possible source of our children’s stress can be, · 11. frankly, a little scary. But it’s up to parents to think like detectives and look for some of · 12. the clues (and there always are) that can signal that something is up. * The headline is accompanied by a picture of a boy holding his hands over his ears, looking straight into the camera with an angry and tired look on his face. In this example, the too involved parent has negative consequences for the child as indicated in line 3- It can cause trouble, for instance at school, and can lead to such problems for children as stress, bullying or violence against themselves and others. Hence, parents are encouraged to pay attention and be sensitive to changes in their children’s behaviour. If children ‘lash out to authority figures at school’ (lines 8-9), then there is reason to step back as an involved parent. The argument is that children ‘don’t have a way to express their need for more space’ (lines 9-10). Good parents are expected to improve their parental skills and satisfy their children’s needs, but one always has to be aware of the danger of trying too hard. At the same time, this construction of the good parent is related to a construction of the child as a social neophyte with no agency and only capable of reacting to the parents’ way of acting. What does it actually mean to be too involved? First, the parent coordinates the child’s life and this is problematic if the child is inundated with academic, social and athletic activities (line 4). Furthermore, this phenomenon is described in terms of ‘school workload, extracurricular activities and family demands’ (line 5). Second, parents can take over their child’s life as in example 1. Helicopter parenting, as mentioned, is often described as having the children under constant surveillance, where parents intrude on their child’s social life by ‘micro-managing play dates’ (line 7), in an excessive way. Although parents are seen as the problem in the ‘too much involved drama’, it is underlined that their behaviour is unintended, ‘even well-intentioned parents can stress out their child’ (headline), and ‘even when we’re trying to do good’ (lines 2-3). Parents are depicted as having the best intentions even when it goes wrong. Parents are thus portrayed as people who have to work on their parental competence to recognise when they cross the border of involvement. This is not an easy task. The phrase ‘identifying ourselves as a possible source of our children’s stress can be, frankly, a little scary’ (lines 10-11) puts all parents in a similar position, where they have to acknowledge that they may be the source of their children’s problem, and this can be hard for many parents to accept. Moreover, parenting is a difficult and challenging activity. This works as a resource in the production of the story of the too involved parent, which becomes an experience people can identify with and share without feeling guilt or shame. The option given to them is to adjust to the advice that is offered, pay attention to their behaviour and work on improvement, in other words develop suitable skills. Hence, parents are expected to regulate their own parenting and avoid the risk of crossing the border. Correcting parenting The good parent is a construction that occurs across media and geographical borders. In the next section, we will examine how the role is portrayed in the Swedish television programme. Compared to L.A. Parent, the show has a slightly different focus, as it highlights problems in parent-child relations. The parents are positioned as unsuccessful from the very beginning. The programme is founded on the idea that the parents are not able to handle the problems themselves; they need support from an expert. Other than the dramaturgy, the expert is relevant in two ways. First, they are crucial for identifying and labelling the problem and, second, they instruct the parents on how to remedy it. In the following section, we will especially focus on how the good parent is fashioned in these correcting practices. Positioned as adult subjects Good parents have to demonstrate adulthood and responsibility. In the next example, we will meet an expert psychologist together with the parents Maria and Kent. They are appearing on the show because their son, Sam, has problems stemming from the fact that his parents often fight. Before we enter the excerpt, the viewers have watched an interview with Sam. The psychologist turns to the camera and explains how Sam feels and acts. The expert lets us know that Sam’s strategy is to withdraw when the parents are arguing, for instance, looking out the window if the fight starts at the dinner table, or retreating to his room when they shout at each other. According to the expert, this is a problem because Sam may use similar strategies to handle personal problems in the future. Moreover, the expert tells the parents that if they do not deal with their fighting immediately, they will soon be confronting a divorce. However, the main issue is, ‘you have to stop fighting in front of your kids’. This is communicated to the parents as a neutral fact and unquestionable truth that has to be dealt with. The expert turns to the parents, signalling that it is time for a dialogue. Maria begins: Example 3: You are an adult Place and time: A Case for Louise, Episode 5, 2009 Participants: Maria, Kent, Expert 1 Maria: I’m that kind of person that when I get angry I get really angry, then it doesn’t · 2 matter if we’re at a restaurant or if we’re at home /Expert: Uhum/ or wherever · 3 we are. Now we’re mostly at home and I suppose that’s why we argue in front of · 4 our kids too since I can’t hold back and wait until the kids have fallen asleep · 5 or go somewhere else to fight and ehm · 6 Expert: You’re an adult, at least according to your birth certificate /Maria: Mm/you have · 7 passed the age when you have the right to act on your impulses that you have · 8 no intention of controlling /Maria: Mm/ and you’re a mother. This example illustrates how Maria starts by producing an account of why the family is facing this situation, claiming that this is the person she is, ‘I’m that kind of person that when I get angry I get really angry’ (line 1). More specifically, if she becomes upset for some reason, no matter where they are or who they are together with, she will let it happen, ‘since I can’t hold back and wait’ (line 4). According to her, this is how she is by nature, thereby positioning herself as innocent and not to blame. The expert confronts Maria by saying, ‘you’re an adult, at least according to your birth certificate’ (line 6). Drawing upon age, using the words ‘adult’ in a disciplining manner, the expert positions the parent as somebody who in spite of her biological age has not yet matured. This description makes the parent’s way of acting look infantile and irresponsible. The expert follows this line of reasoning when she states in an authoritarian way, ‘you have passed the age when you have the right to act on your impulses that you have no intention of controlling’ (lines 6-8). Being an adult is described as being in control, which is what distinguishes adults from children. Moreover, Maria is not only an adult, she is also a parent, something the expert states by emphasising ‘and you are a mother’ (line 8). The subject position of parent is actualised as something that makes it even more important to act as an adult, or to put it another way, acting irresponsibly is acting childishly. Regardless of Maria and Kent’s relationship to each other, they are positioned as adults and, first and foremost, they are Sam’s parents. By connecting parenthood to adulthood the parents are highlighted as always being the responsible part in relation to their children. In this case, Maria and Kent have to adjust to the obligation to stop arguing in front of their child. It can be argued that when parent-child relations are displayed as problematic, the parents are seen as the source of these problems. The subject position of parent is demonstrated in all the television show’s episodes. Usually, parenting is depicted in situations that resemble counselling where behaviour is criticised, but there are also examples where some actions are described as satisfying. For example, we meet Cornelia (13 years of age) in Episode 4, who talks about feeling invisible in her family after her little brother was diagnosed with cancer. Although the disease has been under control for a while, Cornelia tells the viewers that she is unable to gain her mother’s attention, and she feels lonely. She adds that she talks to her stepfather about her feelings. The psychologist describes the stepfather as ‘very very very well functioning’ and that he acts calmly and with patience in relation to the children’. This emphasises what being a good parent is all about; staying calm and being patient, even if, life is storming around the family. The present fashioning of parenting implies a clear distinction between parent and child, and these borders are not to be crossed or blurred, something that is crucial to being a parent. Positioned as changeable subjects As a correcting practice for parenting, they are told that if they do not change their actions will seriously undermine their children later in life: ‘if you continue to do X, Y will happen’. The psychologist as expert provides the answers and offers the proper tools to improve parenting skills. Change is necessary and making this change is what the psychologist describes as being a responsible adult. In example 4, we will look closer at the psychologist’s comments for Cornelia’s parents. Example 4: Mum has a plan Place and time: A Case for Louise, Episode 4, 2009 Participants: Broadcaster and Expert 1 Expert: The mother must be the one taking the initiative, it’s the mother who is the adult, · 2 she is the parent now understanding and realising and thereby sharing her · 3 higher consciousness and telling her daughter ‘now we’re going to change · 4 things, mum has a plan, the adults have a plan’, and that immediately gives · 5 hope, the children will adjust at once, if the mother reaches out and touches her · 6 hand, Cornelia will adjust at once. In this example the identity categories ‘adult’ (line 1), mother’ (lines 1 and 4) and ‘mum’ (line 3) are used as resources for influencing the parent. To be a mother and a mum is to be an adult. The mother is displayed as the competent one in contrast to children, as a mother she is ‘now understanding and realising and thereby sharing her higher consciousness’ (lines 2-3). In terms of being a parent, she has these resources to help her make the necessary changes. She is responsible for initiating changes and improving her parenting, ‘the mother must be the one taking the initiative’ (line 1). It does not matter what happens in life, as a parent you are responsible for solving problems and adjusting to the new situation to make sure that your children are doing well. In contrast to the adult, being a child means that one has no responsibility for solving family problems. Parents display agency, while children react according to the adult’s action. Hence, children are not seen as agents, rather they are described as followers; ‘the children will adjust at once’ (line 5). The expert confronts Cornelia’s mother with demands for immediate changes, and she is expected to work on her parenting. Parents have to learn how to make priorities in life, here the specific suggestion is to change schedules and spend more time together with their children. Change is necessary and if parents change the problem disappears. Conclusion: identity work and lifelong learning Good parenting involves continually correcting and improving one’s parental practice through self-disciplining activities. The work has to be performed by the parent her/ himself and the responsibility for succeeding is always the parent’s. Two subject positions turn out to be important in the production of good parenting: the parent as an adult subject and the parent as a changeable subject. The media settings can be described in terms of learning practices. When it comes to the family, the children are not the only ones involved in learning processes, the parents are in the same position. They are all confronted with expectations, norms and rules on how to behave and evaluate actions, and how to correct their behaviour for the better. Following the logic of learning, in national and international policies, lifelong learning is still an important topic when it comes to contemporary and future societal challenges. The notion of lifelong learning emphasises two dimensions; people are learners from the cradle to the grave and learning is an activity that takes place inside and outside institutions. Learning activities take place in education, but also at work, during leisure time and in family life. Furthermore, each person is responsible for taking the opportunity for accepting the duty to learn (cf. Edwards, 1997; Biesta, 2004, 2006; Nicoll and Fejes, 2008). Learning is an activity people cannot ignore, rather, the importance of identifying and meeting the obligations of being flexible and willing to change are underlined (Assarsson and Sipos Zackrisson, 2005). Lifelong learning can be seen as a discourse, positioning people as responsible lifelong and lifewide learners in all walks of life. Accordingly, parents become the lifelong learners and through the media the direction for improving their parenting is outlined. We suggest that parenting can be discussed and conceptualised as a practice of lifelong learning (Usher and Edwards, 2007) and the media take on the form of a ‘curriculum’ for parenting, where the viewers take part in the conceptualisation, positioning, performance and evaluation. This can be described as governmental-ity at work, illustrating how disciplining activities are managed and negotiated, and also making visible the cultural obligations parents are confronted with. When this performance is conceptualised in terms of learning, the images based on the experts’ advice function as guidelines on how to become the good parent. The lifelong, autonomous, flexible, collaborative and problem-solving learner is constantly involved in self-improvement by actively participating in various learning contexts. According to the neoliberal idea, the concept of pedagogicalisation is actualised (Rose, 1999b; Hultqvist et al, 2002; Popkewitz, 2003, 2008). Pedagogy is found to have become a governing technique that is generalised and applied in other settings than formal education. The practice of correctional treatment, seemingly inspired by formal learning contexts, can be recognised in several arenas (see Fejes, 2006). This close-up analysis of parenting from a governmentality point of view points to pedagogicalisation as a two-fold phenomenon. On the one hand, parents are positioned as competent, appearing like skilful teachers in relation to their children; on the other hand, they are depicted as unskilled learners in need of remediation. Interestingly, these aspects should not be interpreted as contradictory, instead they function as two sides of the same coin, fashioning the importance of learning as identity work; there is always more to be done. In the discursive practice of parenting, one disciplining technique for governing parents’ behaviour appears to be to refrain from giving any other option than being involved in children’s lives and to work on improvement. Everything else is considered inappropriate and is an issue for correction (cf. Rose, 1999a; Foucault, 1991, 1997). In the present study, the same image of good parenting is produced across geography, culture and media settings, and it remains unchallenged. In a time where expectations of parents are more prescribed than ever, a single representation of good parenting across ethnicity, gender, generation and social class seems problematic. Since informal arenas promote a rather hegemonic image of how to be a good parent, we would emphasise that formal adult education reveals, questions and even challenges such dominant norms. Or, at least, considers what media representations reach adults and perhaps have influence in their everyday life. 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