Parent-child communication about internet use and acceptance of parental authority

Structural equation modeling is applied to investigate how parents' communication 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 13 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

The influence of social networking, video games and general computer usage on parent-child relations

The aim of this project was to find out how parents feel about controlling the media/technology use of their adolescent children and how it influences their parent/child relations. This is important because modern entertainment technologies are easily accessible and available to the population; thus they inevitably invade family space and influence family life. A gap in the literature is identified, indicating that existing research does not explore the reasons why parents control or do not control their adolescent children’s use of social media, video games and more. Additionally, there was no literature concerning how parents feel about such control and whether it was part of emotional labour; that being any activities that are performed with a child’s well-being in mind. The project was carried out as the part of an undergraduate degree course by the final year student in sociology. The data was collected through face-to-face and telephone semi-structured interviews with mothers and fathers of adolescents. It was observed that both mothers and fathers felt their control over children’s use of media and technologies influenced their relations. Also the findings show a variety of reasons why parents choose to exercise their control in a particular way, and how it links to parent-child relations

Adolescents' privacy on social network sites: an investigation of predictors of privacy protection behavior

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Feel Safe to Take More Risks? Insecure Attachment Increases Consumer Risk-Taking Behavior

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Parental rearing style as a predictor of attachment and psychosocial adjustment during young adulthood

Parental rearing-styles are crucial for psychosocial adjustment both during childhood and adulthood. The current study examined whether: (a) parental rearing-styles predicted psychosocial adjustment in young-adulthood, (b) this relationship was mediated by attachment styles , and ( c ) gender differences occur in these relationships. Two hundred and forty (103 male and 132 female) university students completed measures assessing parental rearing-style , current attachment style, romantic relationship satisfaction, friendship quality, self-esteem, and social competence. Multigroup structural equation modelling, conducted separately by gender, revealed that parental rearing-style predicted psychosocial adjustment during young-adulthood. Further, there was also evidence of gender differences and that self-models and other-models of attachment mediated this relationship. Together, these findings reinforce the importance of perceived parental rearing-style for subsequent psychosocial adjustment

Parental Monitoring and Youth's Binge Behaviors: The Role of Sensation Seeking and Life Satisfaction

Framed within an ecological perspective of the onset of adolescent problem behaviors, the current study explored the joint role of parent-adolescents’ relationships and youth's individual factors in binge eating and drinking. Firstly, in line with pieces of research highlighting the beneficial impact of effective parenting on youth development, the present paper sought to enhance the knowledge about the positive influence of parental monitoring on youth's binge drinking and eating. Moreover, since literature evidenced that the explanatory mechanisms of the association between parental monitoring and binge behaviors are not fully explored, the study focused on the potential intervening role of sensation seeking and life satisfaction as mediators. The study design was cross-sectional and self-report questionnaires were administered among a population of 944 high school students (M = 16.35, SD = 1.31) living in Palermo (Italy). Path analysis showed that parental monitoring was directly and negatively related to both binge eating and binge drinking. Moreover, sensation seeking negatively mediated the relationships between parental monitoring and both binge behaviors, whereas life satisfaction only mediated between parental monitoring and binge eating. The current study provided data useful to understand the complex interrelations between intrapersonal (life satisfaction and personality trait, i.e. sensation seeking) and contextual factors (parent–child relationships) that may discourage or cause eating and alcohol use disorders among youth. Finally, implications for parents and practitioners working with youngsters were discussed

Digital competencies and capabilities. Pre-adolescents inside and outside school

The investment on key-competences in last years was one crucial European strategy to face the new challenges of the knowledge society and of the digital convergence and to guarantee the active citizenship and social inclusion. The first answer has been given in Lisbon 2000’s, when eight main objectives have been presented; they were focused on the improvement of basic and "soft" skills in educational paths of the main agencies (i.e. school and family). Hence, the digital competence, included in Lisbon strategies, can be interpreted in a double meaning: as basic skill (focused on the digital literacy) as soft skill (focused on the digital learning). Starting from here, this proposal will construct a theoretical description of the digital competence and its impact to cognitive processes of the children, considering the influence and the strategies applied by agencies of the social capital, especially the family. This issue will be analysed through the re-reading the capabilities approach by Sen and Nussbaum (2011), according two perspectives: 1. the first is psyco-cognitive connected to the development of digital competences during the learning process of children; 2. the second is focused on the relational and communicative styles of their socializing agencies. In the digital skills, the generation gap is more evident: the youngsters acquire the digital literacy through their experiences; however their digital knowledge is often technical and linguistic, while it isn’t a lot oriented to the metacognition of the digital media, such as the critical thinking or the creativity; on the other side, the educators don’t have the same familiarity with media and for this reason they not always understand needs, values and references of youngsters. The consumption styles of parents, their prejudices and their competences influence the relationship of children with media starting from their first digital experience, with social and cognitive consequences

Perceived Maternal Invalidation and Drinking Behavior: The Role of Action Control

Alcohol use disorder is one of the most prevalent disorders worldwide. As such, researchers have examined factors contributing to alcohol use. Perception of emotional experiences in childhood as invalidating by parents is one factor that has been found to predict later alcohol use, though less is known about maternal invalidation specifically. Parental invalidation has also been found to predict difficulty regulating affective states (i.e., negative and positive affect), which is also a determinant of alcohol use. Further, researchers have studied temptation to drink and restraint from drinking as related to alcohol use to better understand drinking behavior. Though there appears to be a link, these variables have not been studied together. Thus, the current study aimed to fill this gap by examining the relationship between perceived maternal invalidation, the upregulation of positive affect and downregulation of negative affect, and temptation to drink as well as restraint from drinking. Participants were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk from a larger sample of US adults (n = 1128) who completed self-report measures on emotional tendencies. Participants who reported drinking alcohol in the last year were invited back to participate in the current study (n = 427, Mage = 34.08 and 54.3% female). Bivariate correlations were conducted to determine the association between perception of maternal invalidation, upregulation of positive affect (AOD) and downregulation of negative affect (AOF), temptation, and restraint regarding drinking behavior. A parallel mediator regression analysis was used to determine if greater upregulation of positive affect and greater downregulation of negative affect mediated the relationship between greater perception of maternal invalidation and greater difficulty resisting temptation to drink and restraining from drinking by evaluating direct and indirect effects using 95% bias-corrected bootstrapped confidence intervals of 5000 samples. Results indicated moderate positive correlations for upregulation of positive affect and downregulation of negative affect scores. Negative correlations were found between both upregulation of positive affect scores and downregulation of negative affect scores and restraint, temptation, and perception of maternal validation scores. Further, AOD partially mediated the relationship between perception of maternal invalidation and difficulty resisting the temptation to drink. Perception of greater maternal invalidation was also found to predict greater difficulty restraining from drinking. Clinical implications as well as study limitations are discussed

Fathers, Divorce, and Child Custody

A great many fathers will have their fathering eliminated, disrupted, or vastly changed because they become divorced from the child’s mother. In fact, between 40% and 50% of marriages end in divorce (Cherlin, 2010). Although the divorce rate (measured as divorces per 1,000 people) is high by the standards prior to the late 1960s, it has actually fallen more than 30% since its peak in 1980. The decline in divorce rates in recent years has, however, been concentrated among the college-educated portion of the population; divorce rates among the less well educated may have even increased (Cherlin, 2010). But for both groups, divorce remains the most prevalent reason for changes in paternal parenting opportunities. For almost all divorced fathers (as well as for most mothers and children), divorce is a life-defining event, around which all other experiences are organized: before the divorce versus after the divorce. Although mothers’ parenting is generally changed by divorce, the revision to the parent-child interaction patterns is generally not as far-reaching as it is to fathers’ (Braver & Lamb, in press; Braver, Shapiro, & Goodman, 2005; Fabricius, Braver, Diaz, & Velez, 2010). The reason, of course, is the radical difference between the two parents’ custodial arrangements that typically occurs. As will be documented more precisely below, mothers generally become chief custodians of children, with fathers having visiting rights only. Although that situation has changed in recent years, due in large part to the fact that research has accumulated that illuminates the unintended negative consequences of that practice on fathers and children, it remains normative. Thus, no review of fathers and divorce can be complete or enlightening unless it also considers custody matters, as we do here