Modern parenting in the digital world

Authors

Keywords:

sociology of childhood, children, parenting, digital technology, blogging, data privacy and security

Abstract

The paper is concerned with sociological analysis of parenting in modern society. The development of computer technology, the widespread dissemination of the Internet, the advent of smartphones and mobile applications have significantly changed strategies of parenting behavior. This article discusses the features of the parental behavior in a digital environment and their use of informational technology. Special attention is paid to the description of websites, online forums, social networks, mobile applications as platforms for interaction between parents and with their children. Specialized websites, forums, social networks combine information and entertainment functions: on these sites parents not only share tips and tricks on children’s bringing up, but also find like-minded friends. Mobile applications and messengers allow modern parents to be in touch with their children and to have information about their location being at a great distance from them and without serious material costs. The phenomenon of parents-bloggers and children-bloggers, as well as the problem of security and confidentiality of data on the Internet, is carefully analyzed in this article. In modern parental behavior there is a tendency to demonstrate parenting in social networks. For example, the number of parents-bloggers and children-bloggers grows, blogging become the instrument for earning money. The article contains the results of an author’s study of the thematic focus of parent blogs on Instagram.

Author Biography

  • Mariya I. Berezetskaya, Belarusian State University, 4 Niezaliežnasci Avenue, Minsk 220030, Belarus

    postgraduate student at the department of sociology, faculty of philosophy and social sciences

References

  1. Chen P, Aram D, Tannenbaum M. Forums for parents of young children: parents’ online conversations in Israel and France. International Journal About Parents in Education. 2014;8(1):11–25.
  2. Johnson S. Intimate mothering publics: comparing face-to-face support groups and internet use for women seeking information and advice in the transition to first-time motherhood. Culture, Health & Sexuality. 2015;17(2):237–251. DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2014.968807.
  3. Hall W, Irvine V. E-communication among mothers of infants and toddlers in a community-based cohort: a content analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing. 2009;65(1):175–183. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2008.04856.
  4. Madge C, O’Connor H. Mothers in the making? Exploring liminality in cyberspace. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 2005;30(1):83–97.
  5. Eriksson H, Salzmann-Eriksson M. Supporting a caring fatherhood in cyberspace – an analysis of communication about caring within an online forum for fathers. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences. 2013;27(1):63–69. DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-6712.2012.01001.x.
  6. Ammari T, Schoenebeck S. Understanding and Supporting Fathers and Fatherhood on Social Media Sites. In: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’15). New York: ACM Press; 2015. p. 1905–1914.
  7. Gibson L, Hanson VL. Digital motherhood: how does technology help new mothers. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’13). New York: ACM Press; 2013. p. 313–322. DOI: 10.1145/2470654.2470700.
  8. Morris MR. Social Networking Site Use by Mothers of Young Children. In: Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW’14). New York: ACM Press; 2014. p. 1272–1282. DOI: 10.1145/2531602.2531603.
  9. Ammari T, Schoenebeck SY, Morris MR. Accessing social support and overcoming judgment on social media among parents of children with special needs. In: Adar E, Resnick P, editors. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media; 2014 June 1–4; Michigan, USA. Palo Alto: AAAI Press; 2014. p. 22–31.

Downloads

Published

2020-01-04

Issue

No. 4 (2019): Journal of the Belarusian State University. Sociology

Section

From the Working Table of a Sociologist

License

The authors who are published in this journal agree to the following:

  1. The authors retain copyright on the work and provide the journal with the right of first publication of the work on condition of license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial. 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
  2. The authors retain the right to enter into certain contractual agreements relating to the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work (e.g. post it on the institutional repository, publication in the book), with the reference to its original publication in this journal.
  3. The authors have the right to post their work on the Internet (e.g. on the institutional store or personal website) prior to and during the review process, conducted by the journal, as this may lead to a productive discussion and a large number of references to this work. (See The Effect of Open Access.)

How to Cite

[1]
Berezetskaya, M.I. 2020. Modern parenting in the digital world. Journal of the Belarusian State University. Sociology. 4 (Jan. 2020), 105–112.