Transcendent Parenting - Raising Children in the Digital Age
Abstract
Whether members of the family are headed to school or work, smartphones accompany family members throughout the day. The growing sophistication of mobile communication has unleashed a proliferation of apps, channels, and platforms that link parents to their children and the key institutions in their lives. While parents may feel empowered by their ability to provide their children assistance with a click on their smartphone, they may also feel pressured and overwhelmed by this need to always be on call for their children.
This book focuses on the phenomenon of transcendent parenting, where parents actively use technology to go beyond traditional, physical practices of parenting. In drawing on the experiences of intensely digitally-connected families in Singapore to tell a global story, Sun Sun Lim argues how transcendent parenting can embody and convey, intentionally or not, the parenting priorities in these households. Chapters outline how parents exploit mobile connectivity to transcend the physical distance between themselves and their children, the online and offline social interaction environments, and the timelessness of seemingly ceaseless parenting. Transcendent Parenting further explores how mobile communication allows parents to be more involved than ever in their children's lives, leaving readers to question whether or not parents have become too involved as a result. With its clear discussions of the effects of transcendent parenting on parents' wellbeing and children's personal development, Transcendent Parenting will appeal to a broad audience of readers, from scholars, educators and policy makers to parents and young people across the globe.
... Compared with the current Western child-rearing ideology, which can be more child-centered and permissive, the Chinese parent-child relationship can be more hierarchical, focusing on producing children who are self-controlled, hardworking, and obedient to parents, teachers, and elders following the cultural norm of filial piety (Chao, 1994;Lim, 2020;Wu, 2013). Other social forces also influence contemporary Chinese parenting in the context of China's transition from "a state to market economy, the implementation of the one-child policy in 1979, the rapid marketization, privatization, urbanization, modernization and globalization" (Kim, Brown & Fong, 2017, p. 3). ...
... While previous research in Western countries on parenting control and its outcomes tends to agree that children suffer psychologically when parents exert control over them through intrusion, pressure, and domination, there is less consensus among families in East Asia or with East Asian heritage (Pomerantz & Wang, 2009). With their cultural norms emphasizing filial piety and orientation toward collectivism, such parenting can be perceived by children in East Asian culture as an expression of care and warmth instead of an infringement of personal autonomy (Lim, 2020). ...
... Concern over children's academic achievement is another aspect of Chinese parenting (Lim, 2020;Wu, 2013). Chinese parents are often willing to sacrifice their own economic and personal well-being to 4 Cecillia Yuxi Zhou International Journal of Communication 18(2024) provide direct and indirect support to ensure their children's academic success (Wu, 2013). ...
This study explores parental views of early adolescents' media use and parental mediation among urban middle-class families in mainland China through a sociocultural perspective. By interviewing 18 Chinese parents, this research found that parents' concerns with media, such as children's eyesight, Internet addiction, and learning outcomes, align with the public discourse, shaped by the parenting philosophy and sociocultural priorities in contemporary Chinese families. Chinese parents tend to develop mediation strategies related to these concerns and refer to restrictive mediation in the context of Chinese guan parenting, a combination of control/demand and warmth/sacrifice, which provides a more nuanced perspective on restrictive mediation in terms of its actual practices. The research adds to the theory of parental mediation and highlights the need to study culturally specific parental perspectives and mediation to understand children's media experiences. Further implications are discussed.
... The factors that are the most influential for children's use of DT are their family relationships, their family's communication climate and connectedness, and their parents' mediating practices (Lim, 2019;Nikken, 2019;Livingstone and Blum-Ross, 2020;Lafton et al, 2023). Parenting that is inconsistent, lacks control and is characterised by inter-parental conflicts seems to have rather negative effects (Sebre et al, 2020). ...
... Familial or parental monitoring protects children in the online sphere only when children perceive their parents as competent and as capable of supporting them, and not when they perceive their parents as primarily seeking to control them or to intrude on their lives by, for example, removing their devices (Baldry et al, 2019;Livingstone et al, 2023). As DT increasingly enable parents to transcend the physical distance between themselves and their children, scholars have started to question whether parents have become too involved in monitoring their children (Lim, 2019). ...
... Doing family practices of care also occurred when parents sought to protect their children through digital activities, and were reflected in children's feelings about being cared for. When older children started moving independently between home, school, friends and other family members, particularly in urban areas, parents could 'parent all over and all of the time' (Lim, 2019). They reported being less worried and feeling relieved when they were able to contact their child anytime and to 'monitor them all the time' (F14). ...
This article contributes to the sociological debate on how digital technologies (DT) have penetrated the lives of families and children, and examines the relevance of digital technologies for children and for practices of ‘doing family’. We analysed qualitative data from focus groups and interviews with children between 5 and 10 years old (n=231) and interviews with further members of children’s families from four different European countries (Austria, Estonia, Norway and Romania). Results reveal that DT contributed to doing family when families created and maintained a feeling of ‘we-ness’ through digital activities; when DT required families to balance different needs, rights, or emotions; and when caring practices were supported through DT. Children appeared as significant actors in practices of doing family. As DT helped to decouple practices of doing family from physical co-presence, doing family was expanded. When children’s needs were fulfilled and their digital competences were enhanced, their resilience increased.
... Digital technologies enable parents to practice childrearing at a distance (Lim, 2020). In Filipino transnational families, for example, migrant women practice intensive mothering by supervising their children's homework through video calls and monitoring children's social media footprints (Madianou & Miller, 2012). ...
... The omnipresence of the internet means that digital labor in parenting, that is, "the work and tasks performed by parents through digital technology and media to fulfill their parental duties," has become an everyday occurrence (Peng, 2022, p. 284). Parenting increasingly involves searching for, screening, and evaluating online information, shopping online for children, attending online parent-teacher meetings, coordinating online educational services, and monitoring and safeguarding children's use of digital technologies (Lim, 2020;Livingstone & Blum-Ross, 2020;Lupton et al., 2016;Peng, 2022). These digital parenting practices were intensified by an unprecedented shift toward online learning during COVID-19 school closures (Goudeau et al., 2021). ...
... The digitalization of parenting has intensified expectations and practices of intensive parenting, while triggering concerns about surveillance and privacy (Clark, 2013;Dworkin et al., 2019;Leaver, 2017). The increasing popularity of digital parenting tools both enables and compels parents to transcend physical distance and extend the temporal span of their role to safeguard their children round the clock (Lim, 2020). For instance, tracking apps and webcams are widely used to ensure child safety by tracing children's locations, activities, and surroundings (Hasinoff, 2017;Liu, 2024). ...
The internet and digital technologies have penetrated all domains of people's lives, and family life is no exception. Despite being a characterizing feature of contemporary family change, the digitalization of family life has yet to be systematically theorized. Against this backdrop, this article develops a multilevel conceptual framework for understanding the digitalization of family life and illustrates the framework by synthesizing state‐of‐the‐art research from multiple disciplines across global contexts. At a micro level, as individuals “do” family online, digitalization influences diverse aspects of family practices, including family formation, functioning, and contact. How individuals “do” family online is not free‐floating but embedded in macro‐level economic, sociocultural, and political systems underpinning processes of digitalization. Bridging the micro–macro divide, family‐focused online communities serve as a pivotal intermediary at the meso level, where people display family life to, and exchange family‐related support with, mostly nonfamily members. Meso‐level online communities are key sites for forming and diffusing collective identities and shared family norms. Bringing together the three levels, the framework also considers cross‐level interrelations to develop a holistic digital ecology of family life. The article concludes by discussing the contributions of the framework to understanding family change and advancing family scholarship in the digital age.
... As we will elaborate on later, this is a salient trend among urban Chinese parents. Strikingly too, besides custom home-school conferencing apps, parents and teachers are increasingly using generic messaging apps and social media (Lim, 2020). ...
... Children are omnipresent in their parents' lives via the social media vignettes -text, photos, videos -that showcase and underscore persistent performativity. By the same token, social media and other parental apps serve as a virtual 'umbilical cord' (Ribak, 2009) that allows parents to be omnipresent in children's school lives (Lim, 2020). While such constant connectivity assures parents of children's academic performance and wellbeing, it also extends the boundary of parental surveillance and control and results in parents' over-involvement in children's educational endeavours (see, for example, Caronia, 2008;Lim, 2020;Nelson, 2010). ...
... By the same token, social media and other parental apps serve as a virtual 'umbilical cord' (Ribak, 2009) that allows parents to be omnipresent in children's school lives (Lim, 2020). While such constant connectivity assures parents of children's academic performance and wellbeing, it also extends the boundary of parental surveillance and control and results in parents' over-involvement in children's educational endeavours (see, for example, Caronia, 2008;Lim, 2020;Nelson, 2010). Over time, over-active parental interventions may deprive children of autonomy and space for personal growth, which has negative impacts on children's development and parent-child relationships. ...
... Lim (2020: 5) refers to such work as 'transcendent parenting', a contemporary condition that describes how 'parenting duties are on an endless loop, where parents parent relentlessly, with little or no chance for a meaningful respite'. According to Lim (2018Lim ( , 2020, parental mediation extends beyond making decisions about how, when and which digital media children can consume, to include being attuned to the virtual and interpersonal dynamics children have with friends and the symbolic role that digital media play in forging and threatening these social relations. Transcendent parenting then highlights the intensive and all-encompassing work involved in digital labour and expands the lens of parental mediation research to consider how children's contextual use of media impacts parental experiences (Lim, 2020). ...
... According to Lim (2018Lim ( , 2020, parental mediation extends beyond making decisions about how, when and which digital media children can consume, to include being attuned to the virtual and interpersonal dynamics children have with friends and the symbolic role that digital media play in forging and threatening these social relations. Transcendent parenting then highlights the intensive and all-encompassing work involved in digital labour and expands the lens of parental mediation research to consider how children's contextual use of media impacts parental experiences (Lim, 2020). Like parental mediation, however, the nomenclature used to describe it fails to acknowledge that mothers, more than fathers, provide this omnipresent role. ...
... This article has uncovered the intense work of mothering in a digital home where mothers constantly think about, negotiate and discuss digital media use with children and partners. The way mothers in this study have inserted themselves into every aspect of children's lives resonates with Lim's (2018Lim's ( , 2020 ideas about transcendent parenting. The findings, however, reveal a new and more complex dynamic related to this role-one that is enacted through a mother's gender, identity, and deep-rooted sense of maternal responsibility. ...
As primary carers of children, mothers provide a central role in mediating and negotiating children's digital media use in the home. In parental mediation research, this work is often reported with a gender-neutral tone, implying both parents play an equal role. This study challenges this bias by unmasking the mediation practices and experiences of mothers. Qualitative interviews revealed mediation is bound by maternal desires to protect, guide and educate children in their media use. The intensity of this care role, often conducted in parallel with other unpaid and paid work, also leads mothers to deploy self-satisfying strategies that facilitate repose. The study illustrates how the gendered role and experience of mothering influences the mediation strategies mothers' use and argues for broader recognition of these nuanced practices in parental mediation research. It also discusses the implications and impact of parental mediation on the unpaid digital care work of mothers.
... There are several reasons why this is the case. First, smartphones have almost become compulsory for parenting because constant mobile connectivity is essential for families to micro-coordinate in daily life (Lim, 2020). Second, parents use smartphones to supervise, help, and support their children whenever and wherever they may need (Lim, 2020). ...
... First, smartphones have almost become compulsory for parenting because constant mobile connectivity is essential for families to micro-coordinate in daily life (Lim, 2020). Second, parents use smartphones to supervise, help, and support their children whenever and wherever they may need (Lim, 2020). For example, according to a UNICEF (2017) report, children start using mobile devices even before their first birthdays because parents use smartphones or tablets to help children sleep. ...
... Furthermore, smartphones are associated with the feelings of safety and security (Ling, 2004). Especially with the introduction of apps designed for tracking the location of family members like Life 360, many parents started to engage in intimate surveillance practices to ensure their children's safety (Leaver, 2015;Lim, 2020;Sukk & Siibak, 2021). Some parental control apps like Famisafe also provide options to create geofences for safe areas where children are allowed. ...
Children start using smartphones increasingly from early ages. This makes it more difficult for them to develop an understanding of online privacy and managing their personal data. Many parents monitor and regulate children’s online media use. However, they also encourage using smartphones to ensure the safety and security of their children. This study explores how children use smartphones in relation to their understanding of privacy of communication, content, data, and location. It examines data from 7 focus groups with arts-based methods conducted with 37 children in UK. The findings suggest that children think of their smartphones as a private communication technology and a private place, and they manage their locational privacy based on the necessity of using a mobile app and through adjusting the location settings on their phones. The findings also suggest that privacy of mobile data and user content are dependent on where mobile communication takes place.
... Because of the rapid development and wide penetration of digital technology and media over recent decades, people in many societies have experienced the digitization of family life (Dworkin et al., 2018). For example, empirical studies (Clark, 2013;Dworkin et al., 2018;Lim, 2020;Livingston & Blum-Ross, 2020) have found that parents in various societies make extensive use of digital technology and media in their childcare. Although there has been extensive discussion of time use and the division of physical, emotional, and mental labor in childcare within couples, the division of digital labor within the family has not been systematically examined. ...
... Despite this analogy, there has been little analysis of digital labor in the domestic sphere. Although a few recent studies (Dutta, 2020;Lim, 2020) have noted that mothers are more burdened by the digitalization of work and childcare, they have focused either on mothers' work-family conflicts or on parent-child interactions. Little is known about how digital labor is divided between mothers and fathers in the domestic sphere in general and in the context of childcare in particular. ...
... The use of digital technology has recently become an indispensable part of people's family lives in Western and Eastern societies, and has had a prominent effect on childcare. Many scholars have observed that parents widely use digital technology and media in their daily childcare routines, such as seeking out childcare information, maintaining online communication with their children, and managing their children's lives and schooling (e.g., Clark, 2013;Dworkin et al., 2018;Lim, 2020;Livingston & Blum-Ross, 2020;Wilson & Yochim, 2017). The application of digital technology and media transcends the boundary between online and offline environments in childcare and makes parents always accessible to their children and engaged ceaselessly in caring duties (Lim, 2020). ...
The gendered division of domestic labor is a key topic in gender and family studies. While there has been extensive discussion of time use and the division of physical, emotional, and mental labor in housework and childcare within couples, the division of digital labor in the family has not been systematically examined. Drawing on qualitative data obtained from 147 parents in 84 urban Chinese families, this study reveals prominent gender differences in digital labor in parenting by comparing urban Chinese mothers’ and fathers’ use of digital technology and media in searching for parenting information, maintaining online communication with teachers, and shopping online and using online education services for their children. The findings demonstrate an unequal division of digital labor in urban Chinese families, in which mothers shoulder most of the digital labor in parenting. This study enriches the feminist literature by demonstrating the mutual construction of gender and digital technology in the domestic sphere and highlighting a new form of domestic labor divided between husbands and wives in the digital age. This study challenges liberating and progressive myths surrounding digital technology and calls for academic reflection and public attention on its constraining and exploitative implications for women.
... My daughter had one of our old phones because she's recently just started catching the bus home so we'd given her that technology just so that we knew, and if we had to change plans for whatever reason we can give her a call at school (Jemima, 10-year-old son, 12-year-old daughter). Lim's (2020Lim's ( , 2016 (Rakow & Navarro 1993) via a smartphone enriches mothers' experiences. The device appears to be indispensable for mothering, having 'become socio-culturally ritualized to the extent that the removal of these media would imply a serious rupture to everyday life' (Jansson 2015, p. 382). ...
... My study supports Lim's (2016; claim that parental mediation is an insufficient concept for examining the relentless act of being engaged in digital media management. Lim's (2020) alternative suggestion of 'transcendent parenting' accounts for the more extensive range of responsibilities that are undertaken by parents who manage children's online and offline worlds. ...
... Lim's (2020) work on transcendent parenting and Lim and Soon's (2010) study of how mothers' domestication practices are shaped by children's media use are exceptions. ...
Mothers are both users of digital media and facilitators of children’s use, yet little research has explored how these intersecting points of digital interaction shape their mothering experience. This thesis explored how the growing importance placed on digital media use for everyday societal functions impacts the role and experience of mothering in the home. Qualitative interviews with mothers revealed that changes in the digital learning practices of schools, and the need to maintain a digital umbilical cord with children, increased ownership and use of digital devices in the home. Time-poverty was alleviated and exacerbated by mother’s own use of digital media and intensified by the need to manage children’s use. The study concludes that contemporary mothering manifests as digital mothering, a state that is experienced and interceded through complex interactions with digital media in the home.
... It is also believed that the use of technological parenting tools may start to redefine contemporary notions of child rearing. Parental monitoring is deemed desirable and sensible (Lim, 2020), whereas offline parenting can be viewed as irresponsible and even reckless behavior (Leaver, 2017). Therefore, it has been claimed that the concept of a "good" parent is also being reshaped (Siibak, 2019), as many parents might have doubts as to whether they are fulfilling their parental roles "correctly". ...
... By constructing location information as vital to safety, tracking apps contribute to a normalization of surveillance that erodes privacy (Hasinoff, 2017). Although "helicopter parenting" is widely criticized, digital surveillance tools used for child safety do not seem to face the same level of scrutiny (Lim, 2020). This means that the use of these apps may help to normalize the idea that privacy should be sacrificed for safety. ...
... Our sample was also rather homogeneous and highly gendered (18 mothers and 2 fathers). Nevertheless, as our aim was to conduct interviews with some of the most information-rich parents, that is, parents who were more involved in the use of tracking technologies, and the imbalance of gender structure in our sample is not only a reflection of the unequal distribution of the parenting burden but also an indication that mothers indeed are more likely to engage in transcendent parenting (Lim, 2020;Lupton, 2016). The fact that we were only able to recruit middle-class families serves also as an indication that transcendent parenting is more pervasive in urban middle-class societies (Lim, 2020). ...
Digital parenting tools, such as child-tracking technologies, play an ever-increasing role in contemporary child rearing. To explore opinions and experiences related to the use of such tracking devices, we conducted Q methodology and a semi-structured individual interview-study with Estonian parents (n=20) and their 8- to 13-year-old pre-teens (n=20). Our aim was to study how such caring dataveillance was rationalized within the families, and to explore the dominant parenting values associated with the practice. Relying upon communication privacy management theory, the issues of privacy related to such intimate surveillance were also studied. Three factors relating to the use of tracking technologies were extracted from both parents (Tech-Trusting Parent, Cautious Parent and Careful Authoritarian Parent) and pre-teens (Compliant Child, Autonomous Child, and Privacy-Sensitive Child). Tracking technologies were viewed as parental aids that made it possible to ease anxieties and provide assurance to parents and children alike. Although children did not associate the use of tracking technologies with intrusion on privacy, they expected to have a chance to coordinate their privacy boundaries.
... In 2018, China was home to approximately 100 million children aged between 0 and 6 years, a demographic with tremendous market potential. The consumer market for this age group has already surpassed a staggering 1.5 trillion yuan, illustrating the immense opportunities in the early childhood education app market (Lim, 2019). As people's lifestyles improve and their consumption patterns evolve, the early childhood education app market continues to expand rapidly. ...
... Kindergartens can enhance the coordinated and flexible development of children's finger strength and large and small muscle movements through structured games, and they can exercise the ability of children's fingers to touch the screens of smart mobile terminals (Liu, 2021). Moreover, kindergartens can cultivate children's cognitive growth and thinking skills through various teaching activities, enabling children to better understand the content and operation rules of early childhood education apps (Lim, 2019). At the same time, kindergartens can cultivate children's concentration through various activities and help them to develop proper habits such as obeying agreements and keeping time. ...
The advent of mobile app development, driven by the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets, has revolutionized early childhood education. This transformation is exemplified by the proliferation of early childhood education apps. Academic interest in education apps, particularly early childhood, underscores their importance in shaping learning experiences. This study delves into Chinese families' utilization patterns, examining awareness, attitudes, and guidance on app usage and children's engagement frequency. Results indicate early exposure and high-frequency use, underlining the apps' prevalence. The study also identifies the strengths and challenges of these apps. While they offer flexibility, interactive learning, and extensive content, there are concerns regarding potential addiction and lack of critical thinking. Collaboration among stakeholders, including schools, parents, and developers, ensures responsible usage. The research provides actionable recommendations. Parents should adopt a balanced view of early childhood education apps, recognizing their potential benefits while mitigating risks. Fostering a positive parent–child relationship is crucial, emphasizing communication and mutual understanding. Parents should enhance their ability to select and operate apps effectively. Creating an appropriate environment and providing scientific parenting instructions are also essential. Kindergartens are pivotal in cultivating children's good operating habits and formulating relevant regulations to ensure app quality. Theoretical implications highlight the need for a holistic approach, considering the interplay between children, parents, and technology. Policymakers, developers, and educators must acknowledge parents' pivotal role in digital education. Policies should promote responsible screen time and high-quality content. This study offers valuable insights into the evolving landscape of early childhood education, shaping the future of digital learning experiences for young children.
... Scholarly interest in mobile media and the home goes far beyond the frequency of use. It also engages deeply with the rules, roles, power dynamics, and relationships surrounding communication technology and the home, especially in cases of families with children and adolescents (Chambers, 2016;Lim, 2020). Those studies recognize the home as a site of connectivity, but not in ways that account for physical mobility as we do here. ...
... Whether the intended privacy is for the user, their interlocutor, or the person/people around them helps reveal the power dynamics of bounded connected mobility, in this case. Relationships within places of connected mobility, such as the home (Chambers, 2016;Lim, 2020) and work (Stephens, 2018), entail a distinctive set of power dynamics from those people encounter when moving about urban and public domains, and this study offers traction for studying how movement and connectivity shape these dynamics. ...
Findings from this survey of China and the United States support the proposition that bounded connected mobility, or use of mobile media while moving within locations, can be distinctively meaningful for how and why people use the technology. Among the results, we found that in China, connected mobility at home was associated with use of the technology for coordination, while between locations was associated with news. In the United States, connected mobility at home was associated with the use of the technology for passing time, and between locations was associated with personal relationships. The discussion interprets these and other findings in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and different lockdown conditions in China and the United States, as well as implications for scholarship on placemaking, mobilities, and mobile media and communication.
... Due to the distinct relationships and roles that parents have in children's lives and recent scholarly interest in datafied parenting (cf. Mascheroni & Siibak, 2021;Barassi, 2020;Lim, 2020;Livingstone & Blum-Ross, 2020, etc.), the first section of the report will focus on potential breaches of children's interpersonal privacy that might result from the data practices of their parents. The second part of the report will provide an overview of the practices of the young that have become increasingly commercialised and commodified, leading to potential breaches in commercial privacy. ...
... Holloway, Mascheroni & Inglis, 2020;Johnson, 2014;Nelson, 2008); while parents of pre-teens and teens rely upon different parental controls to keep their children safe online (Ali et al., 2020;Anderson, 2019;Cino, Mascheroni & Wartella, 2020;Feal et al., 2020;Smahel et al. 2020) and different other-tracking technologies to keep an eye on them while being physically distant from each other (e.g. Ervasti, Laitakari & Hillukkala, 2016;Hasinoff, 2017;Lim, 2020;Sukk & Siibak, 2021). The above suggests that in today's contemporary technology-saturated society, where various digital technologies lure parents in with the promise of constant connection, has not only helped pave the way to intensive mediatised parenting (Clark, 2013;Nelson, 2010) but has led to "transcendent parenting"; in other words, "the apparent ceaselessness of parenting duties" (Lim, 2020: 5). ...
... In flexibilized, post-digital capitalism, workers need to spend significant amounts of energy and time on tasks that serve to define work relative to other life domains (Richardson, 2018). The kind of everyday digital work that contemporary livelihoods require has been conceptualized as, for example, "digital housekeeping" (Kennedy et al., 2015), "the invisible work of flexibility" (Whiting and Symon, 2020), "digital mundane work" (Wilson and Yochim, 2017), "online boundary work" (Siegert and Löwstedt, 2019), and "transcendent parenting" (Lim, 2019). Though these concepts are not directly interchangeable, they all point to work tasks which-like older forms of reproductive housework (Gregg and Andrijasevic, 2019;Jarrett, 2014)-are vital for the management of daily life and to capitalist value creation. ...
... Post-digital parenting is what we might call the specific form of child care that the disconnection turn imposes, notably tasks pertaining to screentime control. Like the more wide-ranging phenomenon of "digital parenting" (Livingstone and Blum-Ross, 2020) or "transcendent parenting" (Lim, 2019), such work is currently subjected to fast commodification and increasingly framed as an indispensable element of responsible child raising. The marketization of post-digital parenting also enables parents to outsource such work. ...
In post-digital capitalism, digital disconnection is not merely a “luxury” but also an obligation. Aiming to re-contextualize digital disconnection outside of digital detox resorts, social media, and elitist activism, this article asks how the ongoing disconnection turn affects how we (think about) work. With cues taken from digital disconnection studies and (digital) work/labour research, I inquire three facets of disconnective work. I elaborate, firstly, what disconnection might mean for work, as I scrutinize ideals pertaining to “deep” and “slow” work. Secondly, I unveil how disconnection may materialize at work, as I inspect “the post-digital workplace” and “disconnective technologies of work.” Thirdly, using “The Post-Digital Housewife” as a rhetorical figure for grasping the daily, typically unpaid, work that the disconnection turn makes acute, I recognize disconnection as work. The article concludes by presenting four dialectics of disconnective work, which serve to remind us of the paradoxical role of disconnection in processes of empowerment and exploitation.
... Indeed, children's engagement with offline spaces and relationships are now increasingly mediated by their experiences of digital environments (Livingstone, 2009). These changes have also greatly impacted parents' lives and their parenting priorities (Lim 2020;Livingstone and Blum-Ross 2020). As parental responsibility vis-à-vis children's ICT use has come under greater scrutiny, parents in the West have taken on the added task of mediating their children's digital media use, thus attempting to manage the risks associated with it (Livingstone and Blum-Ross 2020;Livingstone and Franklin 2018;Nikken and Schols 2015;Sonck, Nikken and De Haan 2013). ...
... Co-use differs from the other two in the sense that parents here use media devices in the company of their children without using it as an opportunity to comment on its effects (Sonck, Nikken, and De Haan 2013). This debate around parental mediation has largely dealt with the relative effectiveness or popularity of these parental strategies within households across the class divide wherein middle-class parents have been found to be more anxious to curb the risks, distractions and time-waste wrought by digital media (Lim 2020;Clark 2012). This article shifts focus from questions about the need for or the efficacy of these parental mediation techniques, to ask a different question: How do both parents and their children navigate these parental mediation strategies within the home and how does it reshape parent-child relations? ...
This article draws upon my qualitative study with 8-to-12-year-old British Indian children and their professional middle-class parents, to demonstrate the ways in which parental mediation of children’s digital leisure play out within the home. Using the relational lens of ‘generational order’, I identify the ways in which children ‘navigate’ their way around restrictive parental mediation of digital technologies just as parents ‘navigate’ multiple moral discourses emerging from media and policy circles imploring them to curb children’s screen-time. Understanding these ‘navigation’ strategies around children’s digital media use at home throws fresh light on parent-child relations, children’s agency and their imbrications with wider generational structures. I conclude by arguing that greater empirical analyses of the relational aspects of parenting and childing are needed for Childhood Studies to fully appreciate the way generational structures inflect the lived geographies of childhood and parenthood in the context of children’s home-based digital leisure.
... Second, and most importantly, is the double-faced nature of digital media, that simultaneously represent both the object of parental concerns and their regulatory attempts, and resources for parenting through anxiety-reducing devices (Ribak, 2009). Indeed, digital parenting (Mascheroni, Ponte, & Jorge, 2018) indicates the profound incorporation and naturalization of digital tools in the everyday practices of par-enting, including forms of remote parenting (Clark, 2013) and micro-coordination of family life, up to the emergent practices of transcendent parenting (Lim, 2020) and intimate surveillance (Leaver, 2017). Transcendent parenting refers to the mobile-based and online-based practices through which parents transcend physical distance, and the boundaries between online and offline interactions, in order to be always 'there' for their children. ...
... Transcendent parenting refers to the mobile-based and online-based practices through which parents transcend physical distance, and the boundaries between online and offline interactions, in order to be always 'there' for their children. Mobile media and digital media, then, support an extension of parenting across space, by transcending the limits of physical proximity, and across time, enabling an intensive and timeless enactment of parenting and a continuous provision of care at a distance (Lim, 2020). ...
The contribution aims to present a critical analysis of Circle-a screen time management and parental control device-through the lens of parental mediation, children's surveillance, and children's rights to online participation. Circle promises to sell parents peace of mind by allowing them to monitor their children's online activities. In order to investigate how parents themselves understand Circle, we conducted a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of a sample of 154 parental reviews about the device on Amazon and Searchman by parents of children from early childhood to adolescence , with respect to perceived advantages and disadvantages of the device, parenting styles, and (the absence of) children's voice and agency. Results suggest an ambivalent relationship between parents and the device. Most reviews adhere to the dominant discourses on 'screen time,' framing children's 'intimate surveillance' as a good parenting practice , and emphasize the need for the 'responsible parents' to manage their children's online experiences with the aid of Circle. Others, in turn, criticize the device for failing to enable fine grained monitoring, while few reported the device could dismiss children's voice and cause conflicts in the households. Overall, findings suggest that parental control devices may promote restrictive mediation styles hindering children's voice and their exploratory and participatory agency online.
... The study found that sudden tablet discontinuation caused tantrums without significant changes in tantrum behaviors during the transitional phase. This highlights the challenges of regulating children's screen time and the need for family-friendly technology (Daniels et al., 2012;Sekarasih, 2016;Sjuts, 2014 (Lim, 2019). ...
This research employs a qualitative phenomenological approach to investigate the occurrence of tantrums in early childhood as a result of restrictive media mediation. The study involved 24 lecturers who had children aged 2-6 years exhibiting tantrums. Expressions of tantrums included crying, screaming, throwing objects, holding one's breath, kicking and hitting, rolling, and shouting. Lack of communication before taking away the smartphone when the child is tired, suddenly removing the smartphone when the child is engrossed in using it, and drowsiness serve as triggers for tantrums. Initial parental reactions ranged from confusion to ensuring a safe environment around the child. These responses sometimes involved coercion or physical punishment. Dealing with tantrums proved to be the primary factor influencing parental self-confidence. Weekly tantrums typically lasted for 3–10 minutes and could extend to 8–10 minutes with cooling-down periods. Strategies for handling tantrums included diverting attention, creating a secure environment, meeting the child's needs, ignoring certain behaviors, enforcing consistent rules, providing comfort, and managing one's emotions. Support from family members, behavior management of children, varied distraction activities, open communication, and external support were contributing factors in managing tantrums. Authoritarian parenting patterns, negative peer influences, emotional instability in children, busy parents, poor digital behavior, and financial constraints were inhibiting factors. This study underscores the complexity of addressing tantrums in a context of restrictive media mediation and emphasizes the importance of implementing effective coping mechanisms, enforcing consistent digital discipline, fostering active parent-child communication, and building strong support systems in parenting.
... Interrogating this assumption, we argue that online dating reconfigures individuals' experiences of time in complex ways beyond mere temporal compression. Despite growing attention to people's diverse temporal experiences in digitally mediated lives (e.g., Acedera & Yeoh, 2019;Lim, 2019;Liu, 2024), research has yet to examine such experiences in online dating and how they influence online daters' efficiency perceptions. ...
Online dating is widely assumed to enhance the overall efficiency of relationship formation through expanding the pool of potential partners. Yet little is known about how this presumed efficiency plays out beyond the initial search stage. Although temporal compression (i.e., saving time) is considered central to the notion of efficiency, individuals' lived realities of time and efficiency in online dating remain understudied. Adopting a grounded theory approach to analyzing 31 in-depth interviews with heterosexual Chinese immigrant online daters in Canada, we reveal how time-related expectations and experiences shaped their perceptions of (in)efficiency throughout different stages of online dating. Specifically, our participants started with an efficiency expectation of temporal compression, expecting online dating to save time. As the dating process unfolded, however, they experienced inefficiency through diverse temporalities, including temporal suspension and simultaneity in mediated communication and temporal reconfiguration during modality switching. These experiences contradicted our participants' initial efficiency expectation, prompting some to reevaluate their expectation and develop a preference for temporal slowdown in dating. Our findings highlight an "efficiency paradox" whereby the promise of efficiency not only runs counter to online daters' lived realities but also amplifies perceptions of inefficiency. Foregrounding the voices of racial minority immigrants, our study challenges the commonly envisioned efficiency of online dating and provides new insights into how digital technologies mediate intimate lives through shaping individuals' temporal experiences.
... Despite various studies acknowledging how adults often underestimate how aware and capable children could be in respect to privacy issues boyd, 2014, Üzümcü, 2023), the few empirical studies on children under age seven (see Livingstone, Stoilova, and Nandagiri 2019) observe how very young children are often unaware of privacy concerns (Kumar et al. 2017 Relatedly, research on tracking technologies, such as surveillance cameras (Mäkinen 2016), parental controls, and monitoring apps, also reveals how parent exert both control and care through forms of "intimate surveillance" (Leaver 2017) and "caring dataveillance" (Lupton 2020). Yet, these practices, while presented as solutions to digital parenting in what is deemed "transcendent parenting" (Lim 2020), have the potential to increase the privacy risks of all family members (Ali et al. 2020). ...
The widespread surveillance of everyday family life poses threats to parents’ and children’s right to privacy. Even though considerable research on privacy in families with young children exists, more evidence on the interplay between contextual factors and privacy issues is needed to enrich our understanding of privacy as grounded in everyday family life. To this aim, this paper conceptualises privacy as a situated and emergent phenomenon related to family cultures, socioeconomic background, technological imaginaries, and other significant markers of everyday family life. Drawing on qualitative data from a longitudinal research project with parents of children aged zero to eight, the study shows that privacy risks and threats are mostly associated with the interpersonal context; corporate and institutional surveillance are naturalised within notions of convenience or resignation to big-tech corporations. As technological and surveillance imaginaries influence such a complex web of privacy dynamics, this paper advocates for a situated and contextual approach to family privacy and surveillance in times of datafication.
... Zhenzhen's daughter's resistance to co-presence intervened in the parent-child relation, which then motivated a shift to virtual co-presence. Contexts beyond their family also shaped the desire for virtual co-presence, including intensive parenting practices (Faircloth, 2015), or transcendent parenting in a digital age where technology can narrow the physical distance between children and parents, for example, through location tracking, cameras, and monitoring social media (Lim, 2020). What is considered normal and unsurprising in one cultural context (China) may be considered significantly inappropriate in another (Canada). ...
... Screen time and parental roles (Lauricella et al., 2015), new parental roles and child rearing in the digital world (Lim, 2019;Livingstone & Blum-Ross, 2020;Nouwen & Zaman, 2018;), new digital rules in the family (Hiniker et al., 2016), and digital parenting in disadvantaged families (Huang et al., 2018) are on the agenda, and it is clear that these studies are illuminating the path of parents' anxieties in child rearing in the digital age. Studies that provide a better understanding of the characteristics and factors associated with earlier or more extensive use (Konok et al., 2020) have paved the way for prevention and intervention studies. ...
As children spend more time in the digital world, numerous researchers have studied access to and use of the internet. They pointed out the positive and negative consequences of that. However, despite the importance of children’s conscious use of the internet and parental guidance, the awareness and needs of parents in this area have not been discovered. In order to provide a correct and healthy counselling service, it is useful for the person providing it to be aware of the need for the service to be offered and then to examine his or her self-efficacy in this area. To address the gap in the relevant literature, in this embedded mixed-methods study, we first interviewed parents (n = 40) to explore their digital parenting and identify their needs. We then developed a digital parenting training program to address these needs and sought to raise parents’ awareness. We tested the effect of the program we developed using the experimental design pretest-posttest-follow-up-tested control group. We used the risk protection subdimension of the Digital Parenting Awareness Scale as a data collection tool. At the end of the training, we found that parents in the experimental group (n = 14) showed a significant increase in protection from risks in digital parenting. In a follow-up measurement three months after the end of the training program, we found that the scores of parents in the experimental group had not changed significantly in terms of protection against digital risks, i.e., this change persisted. As part of the findings, we made professionals who provide family education and counseling aware of the digital parent training program and suggested that they use the program we developed in the family trainings they organize.
... By the time broadcast media entered the domestic environment, much had been written about the role of the media in shaping the experience and organisation of time in family life: For example, scholars have emphasised the role of broadcast media in providing a shared temporal framework that forms the background of many domestic routines (see Scannell, 1996); more recently, the emergence of novel, "transcendent" (Lim, 2019) parenting practices, supported by mobile media and the micro-coordination of hectic family schedules, has been theorised. The Domestication of Technology approach (Haddon, 2011;Silverstone et al., 1992) examined the temporalities of media use as a crucial indicator of how digital media were incorporated into households' everyday lives -including questions of how digital media fit into people's temporal routines or generate new routines, which roles technologies come to play in their lives, how they are used and made sense of, and how they are regulated. ...
The discrepancy between children’s actual amount of viewing time and parents’ accounts of their concerns, rules, and parental mediation choices has been documented in empirical research, and typically interpreted through the lens of the Uses and Gratifications theory – showing how parents change their attitudes towards screen media in order to satisfy their own needs. Based on a qualitative longitudinal research project, including app-based media diaries, with 20 families with at least one child aged eight or younger, we aim to make two contributions to the literature. With regard to theory, we aim to highlight the heterogeneous and contingent ways of balancing the place of digital media in children’s lives that arise from parents navigating screen time discourses, social pressures, and daily schedules. With regard to methods, we argue for the combination of qualitative data and app-based media diaries to contextualise and interpret potential discrepancies between reported screen time and parental anxieties or hopes about digital media.
... Mobile communication can be framed as a practice that transcends geographic borders and boundaries, yet mobile media are often used to share the realities of hyper-localized and place-based contexts. More recently, the Studies in Mobile Communication book series published with Oxford University Press, for which Ling is an editor, has shifted away from deficit frames for understanding mobile phone use to focus more on in-depth analyses of mobile communication practices related to news consumption in Asia (Wei and Lo, 2021) the transformative adoption of mobile phones in rural India (Tenhunen, 2018), mobile parenting in South Asia (Lim, 2019) and mobile communication and politics in China (Liu, 2020). This research demonstrates the complex ways in which mobile communication is changing the world, but neither that world nor the changes are monolithic. ...
Through integrating the research featured in this issue, this article describes generative areas for future research and the means to advance the impact of our field. Reflective practices related to field building and knowledge access for which Rich Ling helped to lay the groundwork are highlighted. Ling’s work in mobile media and telecommunications has influenced the theoretical, methodological, and empirical opportunities for mobile communication research. Four themes for future mobile communication research have emerged: social, seamless, just, and open. These themes align with the work featured in this issue and with Ling’s promotion of practices that enhance our field to develop relevancy, integrity, and ecological validity. This article places special focus on global and social justice as leading to a better understanding of mobile communication in the world.
... Along with the changes and developments of the times, the forms of parenting are built on the basis of fear and anxiety of parents about the future of their children, and those have given rise to various new forms of parenting, namely: Neglectful parenting (Gaudin, 1995); Positive parenting (Neighbourhoods, 2020); Narcissistic parenting (Cohen, 1998;Dentale et al, 2015;Evans, 2018;Kenyon, 2020;Watson et al, 1992); Overparenting or Helicopter parenting (Earle & LaBrie, 2016;Hesse et al, 2018;Lemoyne & Buchanan, 2011;Odenweller et al, 2014;Winner, 2019); Slow and steady parenting (Sanderson, 2007); Toxic parenting (Dunham et al, 2011;Forward & Buck, 1990); Dolphin parenting (Kang, 2015); Hypnoparenting (Firdaningrum et.al, 2019;Wasmin et al, 2019); Hyperparenting (Jansen, 2015;Venkatesan, 2019) Tiger parenting (Chua, 2011;Fauziyah, 2020;Fu & Markus, 2014;Kim et al, 2013); Elephant parenting (Kroll, 2004;Musman, 2020); Lighthouse parenting (Byrne et.al, 2019); Spiritual parenting (Anthony, 2010); Unconditional Parenting or Conscious Parenting (Cousens & Lynn, 2015;Plugarasu, 2020;Rahmqvist et al, 2014); Jellyfish parenting, Brickwall parenting, Backbone parenting (Coloroso, 2010); Free range parenting (CBC Pimentel, 2016; Radio, 2013); Punitive parenting (Zubizarreta et al, 2019); Islamic Parenting (Akin, 2012;Rahmawati, 2016;Ubaidillah, 2019;Yani, 2017); Prophetic Parenting (Hairina, 2016;Suwayd, 2010); Kingdom parenting (Munroe & Barrows, 2011); Christian Parenting (Sinclair, 1992); Jewish Spiritual parenting (Kipnes & November, 2015); Intuitive parenting (Goode & Paterson, 2009;Snyder, 2010); Sacred Parenting (Glickman, 2009;Thomas, 2017Thomas, , 2018; Mindful parenting (Race, 2014;Rogers, 2005;Bögels & Restifo, 2013); Digital parenting (Maisari & Purnama, 2019;Ulfah, 2020;Wong et al, 2020); Screen Smart parenting (Gold, 2014); Cyber Smart parenting (Primary, 2012); Indonesian Parenting (Khomeny et al., 2020); Parenting with Heart (James & Dodd, 2018;Phelan & Webb, 2018); Parenting with Love (Bienenfeld, 2014;Anshor & Ghalib, 2010); Adaptive parenting (Claudio, 2016;Osofsky & Thompson, 2000;Prakoso, 2018); Enlightening parenting (Fitriani, 2017); Screaming Free Parenting (Perdana, 2011;Runkel, 2008); The Danish waf of parenting (Alexander & Sandahl, 2018); Islamic Hypnoparenting (El Shakir, 2014), and there are many forms of parenting that exist, including the latest parenting pattern associated with technological advances as revealed by Sun Sun Lim, namely, Transcendent Parenting (Lim, 2019;Livingstone & Ross, 2020). ...
The massive development of information technology based on big data, internet, and artificial intelligence has brought fundamental changes to human patterns and lifestyles, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic that hit globally, has added to a large and complex problems in parenting, as well as demanding people to take care of their children. Parents must be able to adapt and reposition themselves with new and effective forms of parenting, this can increase parental anxiety. To determine the level of parental anxiety, this research was conducted using a quantitative descriptive method through the distribution of questionnaires based on the GAD-7 instrument. This study focuses on efforts to capture the level of parental anxiety and the need for a new form of parenting. The results can be the basis for further research to find and develop new forms of parenting. The results of research on 669 parents living in West Java, Indonesia, showed that the level of parental anxiety was 63.08% at the level of moderate and severe anxiety. The level of parental satisfaction regarding the form of parenting used is at a low level of 67.12%, while the level of parental interest in the new form of parenting is at a very high level of 98.51%. The need for the latest form of parenting that can respond to the challenges and demands of the times is very necessary to minimize parental anxiety.
... The fact that parents, in their children's minds, do not use tracking technologies too actively, could also be one of the reasons why the pre-teens in our sample did not mind being tracked. Hence, they either had not acknowledged or did not seem to mind this transcendent parenting (Lim, 2020) routine. We can thus conclude that parental monitoring, e.g. ...
Inspired by the communication privacy management theory the aim of our study was to explore pre-teens’ viewpoints and experiences related to their parents’ usage of child-tracking technologies. Relying on Q methodology and semi-structured individual interviews with 8- to 13-year-old Estonian pre-teens (n = 20) who were aware of parental tracking, we will present perspectives for understanding children’s viewpoints on intimate surveillance. Three participant perspectives emerged: Compliant Child, Autonomous Child, and Privacy-Sensitive Child. Although children in our sample viewed parents as their confidants and did not consider such tracking to breach their privacy boundaries, they expected these boundaries to be negotiated and collectively set within a family.
... Milo Champions also does little to account for change in parenting practices, ignoring the complex and contested nature of parenting in the highly networked contemporary childhoods of the digital age (Lim, 2020;boyd 2014: 16-17). Moreover, it is something of a misnomer to describe 'parent-user' as an audience for the app. ...
This article explores a specific – but highly plastic – activity-tracking platform. Marketed to parents, ‘Milo Champions’ encourages the monitoring and rewarding of children, based on their activities and behaviours. The platform incorporates a popular Australian food brand – Nestlé’s Milo – and is designed for children aged between 6 and 12. Utilising walkthrough and software studies methodologies, the platform is traced by analysing app interfaces and online promotional material. Milo Champions is a niche example in the growing category of children’s activity-tracking apps: one that wraps masculinised logics of self-tracking around a multitude of parenting practices and envisages them, being deployed through feminised practices of caregiving. This article adds to prescient discussions about the ‘datafied child’ of the 21st century, and how health and wellbeing informatics are entangled with corporate interests.
... Paradoxically, while some parents describe Circle as a technology that temporarily reliefs them from the bur-den of 'intensive parenting' (cf. Lim, 2019), their use of the technology reproduces the very notion of the responsible parent as an ideal. As such, few reviews raised concerns about children's privacy, let alone critiqued the lack of children's agency. ...
Contemporary children live in datafied societies in which they navigate and use technological innovations that drive on their personal information. Instructing privacy literacy is often presented as a key solution to help children manage their personal data responsibly. While there is agreement on the empowering potential of privacy literacy for children, there are also concerns over the burden that this responsibility places on them and their capacity for resilience. Children are key stakeholders in this debate. Nonetheless, we rarely hear their voices on issues related to their online privacy and data responsibilization. The articles included in this thematic issue account for this limitation by amplifying the voices of children, looking into the practices of parents and exploring the role of the tools being used.
... Here, ostensibly, parents are 'responsible' for first words, and thus children are subjects within the data selfie. For Lim (2020), this is the reality of the 'transcendent parent' (p. 2-5) of the 21st century -a complex and entangled online/offline role that is often belied by the neat selfie images above. ...
Data selfies are representations of self through personal quantitative data: from graphs of Tinder dating outcomes, through to the story of brain surgery told through daily step counts. In this article, we explore practices around what we call ‘confessional data selfies’ shared on the reddit forum r/DataIsBeautiful, where more than 14 million subscribers – predominantly straight men – share often complex and intimate quantitative self-representations of their lives. We draw on an analysis of the top 1000 posts on r/DataIsBeautiful, and a sub-sample of 59 data selfies, to identify patterns in confessional data selfie practices. We identify three themes: families and relationships, routine management, and body rhythms. We argue that these data selfies generate opportunities for self-reflection, connection, discussions of mental health, grief and other personal experiences. Significantly, this occurs largely between men, modulating processes of gendered impression management and expanding the conceptualisation of selfie work.
Existing research has revealed established, culturally unique principles that constitute traditional ideologies of parenting in Vietnam. Yet investigation into the influence of mobile media and global/local pressures on children and parenting practices in the Vietnamese household is negligible. This chapter examines how YouTube is appropriated for children’s learning in the Vietnamese domestic space. It also unpacks how the Vietnamese public versus individual Vietnamese parents enact, debate, and negotiate digital parenting ideologies and glocal intimacies. Using netnography, my data set includes 43 online news articles, 1460 public comments, and online interviews with 15 Vietnamese parents. My findings suggested that the Vietnamese public held and prescribed more local, conservative values, while the interviewed parents embraced a more global, transnational, and innovative outlook. A seemingly media-heavy discussion on YouTube’s roles in Vietnamese children’s home-based learning can become highly contested and diverging when we pay close attention to significant cultural tensions. Parents are irreplaceable agents in negotiating conflicting cultural values and societal expectations for their children’s development through mobile media.
We see four major impacts of digitalization on economies. First, it has created its own sectors and occupations in which it now employs a sizeable share of workers, such as in the information technology and communication industry. Second, it has penetrated each of the industries and service sectors and facilitated growth and development of those industries. The automatization of manufacturing and services through digital technologies is an example in this regard. Third, it has created firm-to-firm, buyers-to-sellers relations, and facilitates local to global trade. Globally, now, a sizeable number of workers and enterprises are managing the communication and flow of information.
Given the increasing adoption of smartphones and other mobile devices by children, the global digital advertising market is expected to experience significant growth. Advertisers are increasingly exploring new ways to engage children by seamlessly integrating persuasive messages into entertaining media content, making advertising less intrusive and more engaging. Global digital advertising targeting children encompasses influencer marketing, advergames, and mobile advertising. Consequently, a substantial body of literature underscores the critical importance of children’s ability to recognize the intent behind advertising and comprehend how advertising messages impact their attitudes and behaviors. Parents play a pivotal role as socialization agents in enhancing their children’s advertising literacy. Numerous studies have investigated parental mediation of children’s media usage, including both restrictive mediation and active mediation. However, there is relatively limited scholarly attention devoted to parental ‘advertising’ mediation. This chapter introduces existing academic research on parental advertising mediation in the digital context. Additionally, it addresses research gaps and emphasizes the implications of parental advertising mediation, with a focus on cultural adaptation and nuances.
Faced with the multifaceted challenges of modern motherhood, more women are gravitating toward online forums such as Reddit to seek support. The inherent anonymity of such platforms helps to create safe virtual spaces where women can openly share their concerns and participate in dialogues about sensitive topics without the burden of judgment or stigma. This book chapter delves into the exchanges that populate these digital spaces to offer fresh insights into the collective work-life experiences of working mothers in Singapore as they navigate the challenges of balancing their professional and familial roles. A thematic analysis of 10 most related discussion threads sourced from 2 Singapore-focused subreddit communities was conducted. The uneven distribution of mental load of mothers to the dilemmas, conflicts, and societal judgements around full-time working parenthood and outsourcing childcare to others emerged as salient themes. Overall, our findings reveal the stubborn influence of traditional gender norms and unrealistic societal expectations placed on working parents, especially mothers, in Singapore. Nevertheless, there is clear evidence of peer affirmation and digitally enabled solidarity that demonstrates the social shaping of these digital domains as virtual circles of support.
Political and socioeconomic factors contribute to the popularity of surveillance camera use at home in China. This study investigates how CCTV (closed-circuit television) technology shapes family communication practices. Drawing on interviews and observations of 12 migrant parents, four left-behind children and four proximal caregivers, this article explores why people use new surveillance technology in the private home sphere to help parenting, and how family members cope with such surveillance. Children’s coping tactics include participation, disregard, escape and resistance. Through the temporalities framework, this article uncovers nuanced immediate, archival and predictive time experiences. The temporality experience of CCTV use is not traditional linear time co-presence, but video-based concentric three-circle time experience. It shifts interpersonal trust in family life into surveillance trust and interpersonal distrust, which requires familial negotiation and trust reconstruction.
This paper unpacks how everyday lives of urban middle-class children were mediated by digital technologies during the COVID-19 national lockdown in India. In contemporary India, children’s engagements with digital technologies are structured by their social class, gender, and geographical locations. The resultant disparities between “media-rich” and “media-poor” childhoods in India are stark (Banaji 2017). In this paper, we argue that the national lockdown in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic exposed India’s “media-rich” children to particular threats and obstacles. Based on semi-structured interviews and mapping exercises with 16- to 17-year-old urban middle-class young people, we explore how being confined to their homes for an extended period when their schools shifted to online delivery of teaching and learning; young people negotiated risks and sought digital opportunities in the management and social construction of the self (Callero 2003, 2014). While the majority of existing studies focus on societal anxieties around children’s digital media use, in almost a medicalized and pathological fashion, and its impact on parenting practices (Lim 2020; Livingstone and Blum-Ross 2020), we shift the attention to study this social phenomenon to help understand how children reflect on their engagement with technology and shape their own well-being through social construction of the self. Our findings demonstrate that children are reflexive users of digital technologies, as they navigate network failure issues, the demands of online classrooms, their own mental health and social relationships, and deploy the affordances of digital technologies to combat loneliness, nurture contact with friends, and explore educational and career resources. These strategies, in the management and social construction of the self, play out within the discourse of pedagogized middle-class childhood in India, which is imbued with notions of academic success and failure (Kumar 2016; Sen 2014). Media-rich middle-class young people’s management and social construction of the self, in the context of crisis and uncertainty, helps promote our understanding of the relationship between social structure, self-structure, and behavior choices, implications of this for child well-being, and reproduction of social inequality in society.
This chapter builds on the work from the ‘new’ sociology of childhood to show that the experiences of girl/childhood should not be assumed as homogenous. In mapping the contours of childhood, consumption and femininity in Singapore, Chapter 2 outlines the socio-cultural domains of what it means to grow up as a girl in Singapore. It illuminates how girls in Singapore encompass a unique set of experiences and circumstances and why tween girls’ dressing is a topic of interest that demands a more culturally-specific approach.
This chapter provides a cultural perspective of tween girls’ dress, which shows how girls’ dressing in Singapore can be better understood in relation to the three themes of aspiration, allowance, and affiliation. Chapter 4 addresses how girls’ dressing and the way girls want to fashion themselves is more likely to be informed by a range of economic, social and cultural factors that are particular to Singapore. This chapter sheds light not only on the importance of clothing and clothing style in girls’ everyday lives, it also illuminates what having certain types of clothing meant to the tween girls in the study. It was mainly through clothes that the young girl participants made sense of class and social mobility (i.e. what it means to be rich and afford more clothing).
This study aimed at exploring trends in parental mediation that have unravelled over eight years’ time in 12 European countries. Relying on the EU Kids Online survey, the study focused on 11–16‐year‐old children's perceptions of parental mediation strategies and the main changes therein between the data collection waves of 2010 and 2018. The analysis demonstrated that active mediation has seen a significant increase in several European countries. While cross‐cultural disparities remain large, restrictive mediation has decreased, indicating that the focus of parental strategies is moving away from setting rules and restrictions towards guiding children in their internet use.
With the rise of hyper education in contemporary China, the phrase “middle‐aged old mother” has become an important narrative identity for mothers over 30 in the urban middle class. Based on ethnographic and virtual fieldwork from 2018 to 2020, this paper weaves together interviews, observation, and social media data to examine mothers’ moral experience of childrearing anxiety in Beijing. This article goes beyond the surface content of “middle‐aged old mother” narratives and instead highlights the narrative context, style, intention, and effect. It aims to understand their first‐person narratives of parenting characterized by heightened uncertainty, high stakes, self‐reflexivity, and gender inequalities. The “middle‐aged old mother” script provides a template for and becomes the “co‐author” of Chinese mothers’ auto‐narratives: It blends self‐mockery, personal story, and social critique in an environment of intensifying competition and moral quandaries. The term is a deliberate act of humor and an invitation for empathy.
The range of available tracking technologies that target parents and children has increased dramatically over the last decade, providing functionalities such as location and activity tracking. Situated in emerging conversations on the more-than-human sensorium, this paper investigates tracking practices among Australian parents of children aged between two and eight. In only rare cases had parents adopted tracking apps and sensor-enabled devices. Parents experienced digital sensors as misleading and an interruption to the desired parent-child relationship. Parents instead leaned on their own observations and other sensory cues about their child’s health and wellbeing. These findings emphasize how sensed and sensored ways of knowing can be out of sync rather than mutually instructive where the technology is used to track another body. It also highlights the relevance of sensing in parent-child interaction orders.
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