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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Development in Infancy
Volume 2 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2024.1420406
This article is part of the Research Topic Early Media Exposure View all 8 articles

Four hours with dad, but 10 minutes with mom: Variations in Young Children's Media Use and Limits Based on Parent Gender and Child Temperament

Provisionally accepted
Stephanie M. Reich Stephanie M. Reich 1*Keiana T. Mayfield Keiana T. Mayfield 2Aubree Krager Aubree Krager 3Deborah Franza Deborah Franza 1Esmeralda Martin Esmeralda Martin 1Natasha Cabrera Natasha Cabrera 2
  • 1 University of California, Irvine, Irvine, United States
  • 2 University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, Maryland, United States
  • 3 California State University, Fullerton, Fullerton, California, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Research on children's media use has disproportionately focused on maternal reports of use. As such, we know little of how mothers' and fathers' reports of children's media use align, how such reports might be related to parental beliefs about the benefits of media for children, or the potential differential impact of child characteristics, such as temperament and gender. Using a sample of 210 low-to-moderate income, racially and ethnically diverse families, we asked new mothers and fathers about their child's media use and limits at 9, 18 and 24 months of age. On average, reports of co-use of media, children's use of media alone, exposure to background television, diversity of daily media use, and use of media for behavior management did not significantly differ between mothers and fathers and were moderately correlated, r(df) = 0.2 -0.7. However, comparisons within dyads found that parents did not often agree on their child's media use. Couples also tended to report different limitations on use, with fathers reporting much larger time limits. For both mothers and fathers, stronger beliefs in the benefits of media when children were infants were predictive of more reported media use at 24 months. Infant negative emotionality was predictive of the use of media for behavior management for both mothers and fathers, and for other types of media use for fathers. Parents of the same child reported media use over the first two years differently, which may indicate informant effects in media research or actual differences in young children's media use with each parent. Given the risks of media use in early childhood to displace important developmental processes, understanding young children's media use within the family system is important.b count of types of media used on average day c range of mean beliefs response: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, 4= strongly agree *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001

    Keywords: media, Digital technology, Parenting, Early Childhood, Temperament, Infancy, Fathers, Toddler

    Received: 20 Apr 2024; Accepted: 29 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Reich, Mayfield, Krager, Franza, Martin and Cabrera. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Stephanie M. Reich, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.