Session Information
14 SES 06, Learning at Home: Attitudes and Strategies
Paper Session
Contribution
Parental views regarding children and child-rearing have received considerable attention in the literature since the 1950s because of their importance in understanding and explaining the variation in people’s parenting behaviors that, in turn, have an impact on the child outcome (Tulviste et al 2007). In current paper, we look at a specific example of child-rearing practices: parental mediation of media usage.
Most of the research on parental views regarding child-rearing so far has focused on the question of how broader cultural ideologies – individualism vs collectivism, independent vs interdependent self, etc. – are reflected in parental child-rearing values. The aim of this paper is to provide an additional explanation to national differences in dominant strategies parents use to mediate their children internet-usage.
We are interested in how family as an institution filters (Hofmeister et al 2006) the grassroots’ effects of globalisation as reflected in mediating children’s Internet use and handling online risks involved. It is of high theoretical but also practical relevance to understand the mechanisms at work in the national differences in such universal features as children’s media use. We suggest that the extent to which parents mediate their children’s Internet use reflects the distribution of socialising tasks between the private and the public sphere. We expect to find that predominant parental mediation styles in a country comply with the dominant gender arrangements (Hofäcker 2006, Hofmeister & Blossfeld 2006) embedded - or reflected - in welfare state typologies (Esping Andersen 1990). We assume that the parenting strategies in a country reflect in turn the institutional filters to globalisation in a country, and therefore the countries that have similar institutional settings tend to have similar patterns in parental media mediation. With that assumption, we hope to get past the idea of culture as the main explanation, insofar as institutions not only emerge on the basis of cultural values, but also get to shape the culture and the values in any society.
The aim of the proposed paper is threefold: firstly, by using multi-dimensional quantitative analysis of the most recent pan-European survey data, we provide a typology of parents based on their strategies of mediating children’s Internet use; secondly, we offer a classification of European countries according to the predominant parental types; and thirdly, we bring out the significance of the underlying institutional roots of cross-national differences in parental strategies.
Acknowledging that the current generation of parents across countries is in a similar situation in having to work out strategies to mediate their children’s Internet use, we find it intriguing that parents in different countries systematically prefer specific strategies. We assume that the factors behind cross-national differences in parental mediation are multilateral: in addition to differences in broad cultural orientations (such as individualistic and collectivistic values) influencing childrearing cultures, various types of institutional filters to globalisation are reflected in predominant parental strategies in different countries. Hence, we expect the countries with similar institutional settings (e.g. gender regimes) to have similar patterns of parental mediation.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Esping Andersen (1990). The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press & Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hofäcker, D (2006). Women’s Employment in Times of Globalization: A Comparative Overview. In Blossfeld, H, Mills, M, Hofmeister, H (eds), Globalization, Uncertainty, and Women’s Careers: An International Comparison. Cheltenham (UK) and Northampton, MA (USA): Edward Elgar. Luck, D (2006) The impact of gender role attitudes on women’s life courses. In Blossfeld, H-P and Hofmeister, H. Globalisation, Uncertainty, and Women’s Careers: An International Comparison. London: Routledge Lwin, M.O., Stanaland, A.J.S., Miyazaki, A.D. (2008) Protecting Children’s Privacy Online: How Parental Mediation Strategies Affect Website Safeguard Effectiveness. Journal of Retailing, 84(2): 205-17. Kirwil, L. (2009) Parental Mediation of Children’s Internet Use in Different European Countries. Journal of Children and Media, 3(4): 394-409. Kirwil, L, M Garmendia, C Garitaonandia & G M Fernandez (2009). Parental Mediation. In Livingstone, S & Haddon, L (eds), Kids Online: Opportunities and Risks for Children. Bristol: Policy Press. Livingstone, S., Helsper, E.J. (2008) Parental Mediation of Children’s Internet Use. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 52(4): 581-99. Lobe, B, K Segers & L Tsaliki (2009). The Role of Parental Mediation in Explaining Cross-National Experiences of Risk. In Livingstone, S & Haddon, L (eds), Kids Online: Opportunities and Risks for Children. Bristol: Policy Press Tulviste, T, L. Mizera, De Geer, Boel and M-T Tryggvason (2007) Child-rearing goals of Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish mothers. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 48, 487–497 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2007.00618
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