MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA
4 Are family values related to parental monitoring relected
by children?
As already outlined in the previous part, the active interest about
children in the sense of “a good parenting“ is related to generally shared
values of contemporary parents. In what way are these ideals relected
in daily reality? How do the children relect the effort of their parents?
We were also able to look for the answers on these questions in data
of our Czech survey. We asked on parental effort in the area of media
education both parents and their children. At the same time we were
aware of the fact that it is a view of two different generations and each
perceives it differently. In a certain sense our aim was to undergo the
parental answers to critical check via the view of their children. Do they
perceive the effort of their parents in the same way? Do they feel interest
from the parental side about media topics? Do the parents talk about the
media issues as often as they declare themselves?
We wanted to observe the discrepancies in the views of the two
participants of the media education process of and compare how they
perceive the situation. Many studies have dealt with the question of
which responses should be taken in account when studying parents´
monitoring family media education. 14 It is obvious that parents tend to
respond in a way that is consistent with society´s expectations about
their parenting practices. Different studies have shown discrepancies
between the responses of parents and their children. 15 However, what
the parents say and how they behave do not have to be always the same.
We tried to capture the way children view their parents’ efforts in the
ield of media education and also to compare the responses of parents
and their children in those questions where it was possible. We analysed
data from 456 respondents whose age and gender structure is shown
below (Table 1). We intended to compare the children´s views on the
14 GENTILE, D. A. et al.: Do you see what I see? Parent and Child Reports of
Parental Monitoring of Media. In Family Relations, 2012, Vol. 61, p. 470 –
487.
15 E. g. FUJIOKA, Y., WEINTRAUB AUSTIN, E.: The Relationship of Family
Communication Patterns to Parental Mediation Styles. In Communication
Research, 2002, Vol. 29, No. 6, p. 642 – 665; NATHANSON, A. I.: Parent and
child perspectives on the presence and meaning of parental television
mediation. In Journal of Broadcasting&Electronic Media, 2001, Vol. 45, No.
2, p. 201–220.
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