As the relationship between social class and health strengthens and socioeconomic and health inequalities widen, understanding how parents’ socioeconomic advantage translates into health and class advantages in the next generation is increasingly important. Our analyses illustrate how a classed performance of “health” is a fundamental component of transmitting cultural capital in families and communities. Socially advantaged parents’ health and class goals for children are often met simultaneously by building children’s cultural capital in community-specific ways. This study uses observational, interview, and focus group data from families in two middle-class communities to illustrate how health-focused cultural capital acquisition plays out in everyday life. As parents manage children’s lives to ensure future advantages, they often focus on health-related behaviors and performances as symbols of class-based distinction for their children. The synergy between family and community cultural capital is strengthening class and health advantages for some children, even as health-focused cultural capital often has drawbacks for stress and well-being. The intensification of and value placed on “health” in cultural capital may have long-term implications for health, socioeconomic attainment, and inequalities. If health-focused cultural capital continues to become increasingly salient for status attainment, its importance could grow, widening these gaps and reducing intergenerational mobility.
Objective This mixed‐methods study examined whether higher‐socioeconomic status (SES) children's digital technology use adhered to contemporaneous pediatric guidelines, how it compared to lower‐SES children, and why, as analyses showed, higher‐SES children's technology use far exceeded pediatric recommendations. Background 2013 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines recommended limited “screen time” for children. Higher SES families tend to follow guidelines, but digital technology use—simultaneously a health behavior and a pathway for building human capital—has complex implications. Method Quantitative analyses provide new nationally representative estimates of the relationship between social class and 9‐ to 13‐year‐old children's technology time (including television), device access, and parenting rules (2014 PSID Child Development Supplement, N = 427). Qualitative analyses of 77 longitudinal higher‐SES parent interviews articulated explanatory processes. Results Higher‐SES children used technology as frequently as others and in excess of recommendations. Their device access, activities, and agency in adhering to rules, however, differed from others. Qualitative analysis uncovered processes that helped explain these findings: parents' ambivalence about technology and perception that expert guidance is absent or unrealistic, and children's exercise of agency to use technology facilitated by “concerted cultivation” parenting styles, led to higher‐SES individualistic parenting practices that supported children's increased non‐television technology use. Conclusion Cultures and structures related to children's technology use are in flux, and classed norms and understandings are emerging to construct relevant class‐based distinctions around parenting.
This study investigated how teenagers reacted to parental regulation of technology. Using longitudinal dyadic interviews with 24 teenagers and their 21 parents in two predominantly white middle-class communities, we explored how teenagers used technology during the COVID-19 pandemic and the differential consequences parental interventions had for teens’ well-being and confidence with technology. Parents’ narratives and actions about technology use were deeply gendered. Boys felt confident about their self-regulation of technology, and parents did not substantially limit boys’ technology use during the pandemic. Girls were less confident about their ability to self-regulate and either worked with their mothers to manage technology, distrusted parents who monitored them, or lacked access to virtual hangout spaces such as video games and social media. The findings illustrate how parent-teen dynamics around adolescent technology use can produce short-term gendered inequalities in teenagers’ well-being and result in long-term disadvantages for girls.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.