ABSTRACT
This study of 267 mothers of young children explores, for the first time, the associations between recollection of parental mediation during childhood and current parental mediation of children’s media uses. The analysis indicated that the mothers’ recollections were significantly associated with mediating their children’s media use in the present. Moreover, these recollections predicted the current mediation more than variables found to be significant in previous studies, such as background characteristics and attitudes. These findings suggest that parents apply mediation practices according to how they recall the parental mediation they experienced in their childhood and call for considering such recalls in future research.
IMPACT SUMMARY
Prior State of Knowledge: Parental level of involvement in the mediation of children’s media uses was studied, so far, within the framework of parents’ socio-demographic characteristics, their media literacy, availability, attitudes towards media effects, children’s age and gender, and particular family circumstances.
Novel Contributions: Mothers apply mediation practices to their children’s media use according to their recall of the parental mediation they experienced in their childhood. This recollection was the strongest predictor of their current mediation above and beyond other factors investigated in previous studies.
Practical Implications: This study’s findings can be of interest to parents and practitioners working with families, since it demonstrates that recollections of mediation experiences in childhood may play a variety of roles in how present mothers deal with their children’s complex media environment.
Given the importance of parental mediation in reducing media’s harmful effects on children and facilitating their positive outcomes, much effort has been invested in exploring the factors that might explain parents’ choices of practices to mediate their children’s media use. Most factors identified so far are associated with parents’ socio-demographic characteristics and attitudes toward the media’s effects on their children. This approach ignores the fact that mediation of media use may be among the behaviors and practices that the previous generation of parents used on their children, who, in turn, apply the same behaviors to their children.
Extensive psychological and sociological literature highlighted the intergenerational transmission of parenting practices and family values. The previous research shows that parents tend to adopt their parents’ parenting and bonding styles (Chandra Sekaran et al., Citation2021), as well as communication patterns with their children and emotional regulation during parent-child interaction (Turkdogan, Citation2021). Moreover, parents are influenced by their parents’ values and worldviews and transmit them to the next generation (Dush et al., Citation2018). Accordingly, how parents recall parental mediation of media uses in their childhood and their parents’ attitudes toward media may impact their current mediation practices.
The present study is the first to examine the associations between recollection of parental mediation during childhood and current parental mediation. As mothers and grandmothers are still more involved caregivers of young children than fathers and grandfathers (Prickett & March Augustine, Citation2021), the study focuses on the mothers’ recollection of their own mothers’ mediation practices when they were young girls. It explores how the mediation practices applied during childhood – as recalled by the mothers – are associated with their current involvement in mediating their young children’s digital and non-digital media uses.
Factors explaining parental mediation
The extensive literature on parental mediation (for a review, see Nimrod et al., Citation2019) outlined four key practices applied by caregivers to mediate children’s digital and non-digital media uses: restrictive mediation, instructive mediation, co-use (including co-viewing), and supervision. Parents engaged in restrictive mediation set rules for the amount and content of media use. Instructive mediation refers to parental discussions of certain aspects of content with children during or following media use. Co-use describes situations in which parents and children share the media use experience without necessarily discussing it. Finally, supervision includes parents’ attempts to remain in the children’s proximity when they engage in media use and to keep an eye on the screen. (e.g., Nikken & Schols, Citation2015; Shin & Lee, Citation2017; Valkenburg et al., Citation1999)
The application of these practices was explained by parents’ socio-demographic characteristics and contextual factors of media use in the family. Highly educated parents were found to use restrictive and instructive mediation more frequently than less educated parents (Nikken & Schols, Citation2015), whereas less educated parents were more likely to co-use than those with a higher education level (Gentile et al., Citation2012). Regarding family income, parents from a higher socio-economic status (SES) were more concerned and posed more use time restrictions than parents from a lower SES (Jordan, Citation1992). Single parents and parents with two or more children are usually less restrictive of their children’s media use (Barkin et al., Citation2006), and parents working part-time are more involved in all types of mediation than parents working full-time (Warren, Citation2005). Finally, within the family context, it is important to consider parent-child dynamics, and especially conflicts, that may be caused by parents’ efforts to restrict children’s screen time (Evans et al., Citation2011; Lemish, Citation2015), which could have implications on the level of parents’ further engagement in mediation.
Parents’ attitudes toward media effects also explain certain aspects of parental mediation: Parents who believe that media have a positive influence on their children’s development tend to apply less often rules restricting the amount of media exposure and are less involved in the selection of content. However, parents holding negative attitudes are typically much more restrictive in their approach to children’s media use and sometimes completely forbid their access to specific media (Nikken & Jansz, Citation2014).
The literature also suggests that the children’s age and gender are associated with parental mediation. Parents of younger children use instructive and restrictive mediation more often regarding TV viewing, whereas co-view increases with children’s age (Barkin et al., Citation2006). Likewise, supervision of online uses is the most common mediation practice applied by parents of younger children, while restrictive mediation of children’s online activities is more prevalent among parents of older children (Nikken & Jansz, Citation2014). The child’s gender associates with parental co-use of media, with parents being more likely to co-use digital media with boys and co-view television content with girls (Connell et al., Citation2015).
The literature thus intensively deals with those factors relevant to the parents’ and children’s lives in the present – their socio-demographic characteristics, attitudes, and the like. However, little scholarly attention has been paid so far to the possibility of intergenerational transmission of media-related attitudes and mediation practices. The socialization into various parenting behaviors discussed in the literature suggests that parenting styles and parents’ communication patterns observed during childhood have powerful effects on how they raise their children in the present (Chandra Sekaran et al., Citation2021). Similarly, mediation experiences during parents’ childhoods may impact their current mediation of their children’s media uses.
Childhood media-related memories
The literature on media-related memories has mainly examined early exposure to various media contents and the lasting impact it might have had on individuals’ cognitive and emotional development (Matthews, Citation2003) and their collective identities, be they generational (Volkmer, Citation2006) or national (Neiger et al., Citation2011). Several studies extended the exploration to include college-age students’ reconstructing a media-related experience from childhood (Götz et al., Citation2019). All these studies found that around 90% of the participants could recall childhood media experiences and that those had a residual impact well into adulthood. We could not, however, find a prior study that systematically investigated memories of parental mediation of media use during childhood, the practices used, the tensions created around them, and the general approach to media use.
The retrospective methodological approaches to studying media memories have been rich and diverse and included the use of drawings, storytelling, autobiographical essays, and other life-history methodologies (Bourdon, Citation2011). Recollection of memories is very different from reporting experiences in real-time, as they are colored by life experiences. It balances the recollection and reconstruction of past events and selectively removes or adds perspectives gained over time (Drotner, Citation1998). Nevertheless, scholars argue that adults can report childhood experiences quite accurately (Brewin et al., Citation1993). Furthermore, it is the understanding a person has of a past experience that shapes the meaning it will carry later in life, regardless of whether it deviates from the meaning it had at the moment of occurrence (Götz et al., Citation2019). Based on the above, this study relied on a retrospective approach to investigate to what extent the recollections of parental mediation practices during childhood predict mothers’ involvement in mediation of their children’s media uses in the present.
Methods
The sample of 267 mothers on which this study is based was drawn from a survey conducted in Israel between November 2021 and January 2022 of 267 non-orthodox Jewish mothers-grandmothers dyads, in which the inclusion criteria was children’s age (4–8 years old) and the grandmothers watching over their grandchildren at least once a week. The survey was conducted by a commercial firm that operates an online panel of internet users. For this study, we only used the data provided by the mothers, who were interviewed via an online survey. The study was examined and approved by the institutional review board at the first author’s university (approval number: 1785). Study participants were presented with a description of the research aims, detailed instructions, and the researchers’ contact information. Informed consent on the online survey was expressed by pressing “I agree.” Although participants were free to withdraw from the study for any reason, all of them completed the survey, and most answered the entire questionnaire.
Sample characteristics
The mothers’ ages ranged between 25 and 50 years old (Mean = 35.91, SD = 5.182); most of them were married (86.1%); and the mean number of children they had was 2.60 (SD = 0.989). The mean age of the child who was addressed by the survey’s questions was 5.5 years (SD = 1.004). The majority completed post-secondary education (69.7%); worked full-time (70.8%); and about half (48.7%) reported income higher than the average.
Measurement
Mothers with several children in the relevant age range were asked to choose one and refer to that child only. For the present inquiry, we have used questions regarding the following topics:
Involvement in mediation. The 16-item mediation scale developed by Nimrod et al. (Citation2019) measured the mothers’ involvement in mediating the child’s non-interactive and interactive media use. Each subscale refers to the four mediation practices (Restrictive, Instructive, Supervision, and Co-Use), with two items per construct. The study participants were asked to rate the frequency with which they applied the mediating actions using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“never”) to 5 (“always”). Cronbach’s alpha for the non-interactive subscale in the present study was .773, and for the interactive subscale, it came to .841.
Recollections of parental mediation during childhood. The mothers were asked to think about the period in which they were at their child’s age and evaluate the grandmother’s involvement in mediation at that time (as mothers). For that purpose, we used an adapted version of the abovementioned mediation scale, in which there was no separation between media types. For example, we asked: “How often did your mother specify when and for how long you could watch TV and/or play computer games?” (see Appendix for the detailed list of eight items on which the scale was based). Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .892.
Recollection of the relational outcomes of parental mediation during childhood. Two questions explored the participants’ recollections of parental mediation’s outcomes in terms of mother-daughter relationships during childhood. The first explored the extent to which it caused tensions and conflicts, and the second examined enjoyment of shared viewing, using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“not at all”) to 5 (“to a considerable extent”).
Attitudes towards media effects on children. The mothers were presented with four media uses common among children and asked to report their opinion about the impact each use has on child development on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“very harmful”) to 5 (“very beneficial”). Two uses were non-interactive (watching TV and YouTube), and two were interactive (playing games/apps and using educational software).
Children’s and mothers’ background characteristics. The mothers were asked to report the selected child’s sex and age, and their age, marital status, number of children, education, work status, and income (higher, similar, or lower than the average).
Findings
Associations between the mothers’ current involvement in mediation and their recollections of parental mediation during childhood
Based on Pearson’s correlation analysis, the study revealed significant positive associations between the study participants’ current involvement in mediation and the recollections of their mothers’ involvement in mediation in the past (p < .01). This was reflected in all mediation practices and for non-interactive and interactive media uses alike. However, the correlations were somewhat stronger for the interactive media. The overall association between the current involvement in the mediation of non-interactive media and the total score of mediation during the mothers’ childhood was .305 (p < .001). For the interactive media, it was .342 (p < .001).
Mothers’ recollections of parental mediation during childhood as a factor explaining their current mediation practices
Two linear regression analyses examined the extent to which the mothers’ recollections of parental mediation in their childhood predicted current involvement in mediating their children’s non-interactive and interactive media uses (). The independent variables in both regressions were the child’s sex and age, the mothers’ background characteristics, attitudes toward media effects on children, and recollections of parental mediation during childhood.
Table 1. Factors explaining mothers’ mediation of their child’s non-interactive and interactive media use: a summary of two linear regression analyses.
Only three variables significantly explained the mothers’ mediation of the non-interactive media use. The strongest predictor was the participants’ recollection of their mother’s involvement in mediation in the past (β=.319, p < .001). However, the more they reported childhood mediation-related tension with their mothers, the less they were currently engaged in mediation (β=-.145, p < .05). The number of children was also significantly associated with mediation, as mothers with more children reported less mediation (β=-.232, p < .01). Overall, the variance explained was 21.3%.
Furthermore, the participants’ recollection of their mother’s involvement in mediation in the past was the sole variable to significantly explain their engagement in mediating their child’s interactive media use (β=-.434, p < .001). It should be noted that the association between the mothers’ recollection from childhood and mediation in the present was higher for interactive media than for non-interactive media, and the overall variance explained by the regression was also higher (27.1%).
Discussion and conclusions
As the first to examine the associations between recollection of parental mediation during childhood and current parental mediation, the present study yielded several significant insights that should be considered in future research on parental mediation. First and foremost, the findings pointed to a significant correlation between the mothers’ recollections of parental mediation during childhood and each one of the mediation practices applied to their children’s use of non-interactive and interactive media alike. Hence, mothers apply mediation practices to their children’s media use according to how they recall the parental mediation they experienced in their childhood.
These findings were further confirmed by the regression analyses, which revealed that the mothers’ recollection of their own mothers’ involvement in mediation in the past was the strongest predictor of their current mediation practices, above and beyond other variables that were found to be significant in previous studies, such as attitudes and education (Nikken & Jansz, Citation2014). Mothers who recalled a high level of maternal mediation in their childhood were more involved in the current mediation of their child’s media use.
Interestingly, the associations between the mothers’ recollection and their mediation of the child’s interactive use were stronger than the correlations with the mediation of non-interactive one. This finding can be explained in that computer interactivity twenty years ago was very different than it is today: surfing the internet was a relatively new media activity, and playing computer games was highly gendered and represented mainly boys’ culture (Lemish et al., Citation2001). In addition, social networks and mobile smart devices were not available yet. In contrast, the current public discourse around media risk for children focuses heavily on these activities. This present reality may explain parents’ higher involvement in their children’s interactive media habits.
Finally, we should notice the importance of the emotional residue in recollections of the mediation in the past, since those mothers whose recollections of parental mediation were associated with mother-daughter conflicts during childhood were less involved in their own children’s media uses in the present. It could be speculated, therefore, that if mothers can reflect upon their family media habits and look at their parents’ mediation practices in the past with more empathy, it would help them adopt a more enthusiastic position towards parental mediation at present.
Mothers’ level of involvement in mediation could also be interpreted as part of a more general parental style: Perhaps recollections of childhood conflicts are feeding into a more permissive or uninvolved parental style in the present in an attempt to avoid such disputes. Then, recollections of mediation experiences in childhood may play a variety of roles in how present mothers deal with their children’s complex media environment.
Limitations and future research
This study has several limitations that need to be acknowledged. First, it was limited to 4–8-year-olds whose grandmothers watch over them at least once a week, mothers participating in online panels, and one national context. Moreover, a significant proportion of the mothers who participated in the survey were highly educated and belonged to the upper-middle class, which might explain why we did not find any contribution of education and attitudes to the explanation of their mediation practices. Second, the study did not consider the grandfathers, who also might have impacted their daughters’ recollection of parental mediation during childhood. Third, the study was limited to retrospective data and applied a pretty simple scale of attitudes. In addition, the mothers were asked to think about their experiences with the grandmothers in the past soon after reporting the same experiences with their children. This proximity could lead to responding in consistent ways.
Future research should examine multi-generational mediation in additional family contexts and more diverse populations. Studies should also explore other mediators (e.g., fathers and grandfathers) and other predictors of mediation (e.g., parent-child involvement, communication patterns, perceptions of relational quality). They should also apply qualitative methods to deepen the understanding of the impacts of contradicting mediation practices on family dynamics and child development. Additional research should also include factors that may help to explain generational gaps. Specifically, it would be of value to look at differences in other aspects of caregiving (e.g., approaches to homework, eating and hygiene-related behaviors, and outdoor activities). Future studies could explore such differences by examining mothers’ and grandmothers’ parenting styles and approaches to childrearing, mothering, and grandmothering while examining the mediation of children’s media use as embedded in them more generally.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 1278/19).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Nelly Elias
Nelly Elias is a Professor at the Department of Communication Studies and a Research Fellow at the Duet Center at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. Her main research interests are media roles in early childhood and in parent-child relations. Her most recent studies deal with family media uses in public places and with inter-generational family dynamics involving various media.
Dafna Lemish
Dafna Lemish is a Distinguished Professor and Interim Dean at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, the founding editor of the Journal of Children and Media, and a Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA). She is author and editor of numerous books and articles on children, media and gender representations, including recently: The Routledge International Handbook of Children, Adolescents, and Media (edited, 2022).
Galit Nimrod
Galit Nimrod is a Professor at the Department of Communication Studies and a Research Fellow at the Center for Multidisciplinary Research in Aging at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. Aiming to contribute to the understanding of well-being in later life, she studies psychological and sociological aspects of leisure, media and technology use among older adults.
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