Television Co-Viewing, Parent-Child Relationship Quality, and Child Wellbeing

Background: An extensive literature has examined the negative effects of television watching on child wellbeing. To that end, The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends co-viewing television with children and prior research suggests that co-viewing may support children’s language development and empathy (Rasmussen, 2017, Reiser ,1984). However, prior work has focused on examining the impact of co-viewing television on children’s cognitive development and behavior and has largely been restricted to middle class families (Warren, 2005). We build on this work to examine low-income families and a previously overlooked, but developmentally important outcome, maternal warmth. There is little existing scholarship on the influence of co-viewing of television on parent-child relationship quality and child wellbeing among socioeconomically disadvantaged families. The present study examines the relationship between parent-child co-viewing of television and three areas of child wellbeing: (1) maternal warmth; (2) child behavior problems; and (3) child cognitive development.

Data: We draw on data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), a longitudinal birth cohort study of children born in 20 medium- to large-US cities. FFCWS includes (N = 4,898) an oversample of non-marital births and is disproportionately disadvantaged as a result. The FFCWS includes a unique set of questions related to the television habits of young children and parental involvement in activities specific to the usage of media (computer, television, and video games) by young children aged 3-9. We also draw on in-home observations of parent-child relationship quality, maternal reports of child behavior (internalizing and externalizing behaviors), and asseessments of early literacy from the PPVT.

Analytic approach: The present study examines the association between parent-child co-viewing of television and parental warmth, child behavior problems, and literacy at when children were 3 and 5 years old. We estimate OLS regressions to test the association between parent-child co-viewing of television and each outcome. We include a robust set of socio-demographic controls as well as lagged dependent variables, which estimate the change in time spent co-watching TV associated with each outcome.

Results: In contrast with prevailing research, results from our work indicate broad negative associations with maternal warmth, child behavior, and cognitive development. In particular, we find that TV co-viewing is associated with a 0.064 (p < 0.008) decrease in maternal warmth, a 0.38 increase in child internalizing behaviors (p < 0.05), a non-statistically significant increase in child externalizing behaviors and 0.38 (p < 0.013) decrease in child’s cognitive development.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings indicate that co-viewing television is negatively linked to parent-child relationship quality, increased child behavioral problems and is negatively associated with cognitive developmental outcomes among children. The study advances our understanding about the influence of co-viewing on parent-child relationship quality among low-SES families by considering a broader range of outcomes than has typically been employed and by extending existing work to consider developmental processes among a largely disadvantaged sample. This is particularly important given the variation in screen time across SES (Rideout, 2017) and the predominant focus on middle class families in the existing literature.