Parents and Children Communicating with Society

Managing Relationships Outside of the Home

Thomas J. Socha, Glen Stamp

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135891398
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Estudios de comunicación

The volume opens a new frontier in parent-child communication research as it brings together veteran researchers and newcomers to explore the communication of parents and children as they create relationships outside the family. The chapters herein examine communication processes and problems of parents and children as they interact with childcare, healthcare, education, and youth sports; investigate the unique challenges facing various types of families as they communicate outside the family (e.g., stepfamilies and gay/lesbian/bisexual families); and consider the role of media in family relationships outside of home.

The primary audiences for the volume includes scholars, researchers and graduate students studying communication in families, children's communication, communication in personal relationships, organizational communication, group communication, and health communication. It will also be of interest to psychologists who study families, children, and organizations; sociologists who study families, children, and organizations; education researchers; teachers; coaches; family physicians; and family therapists. graduate students It has the potential for use in courses in family communication, family studies, family sociology, and child development.

1
A New Frontier for Family Communication Studies

Parent-Child-Societal Communication

Thomas J. Socha and Glen H. Stamp

Over a decade ago within the field of communication studies, Parents, Children, and Communication: Frontiers of Theory and Research (Socha & Stamp, 1995) helped to launch research explorations of communication in parent-child relationships. That volume charted new theoretical and methodological terrain and built a platform for subsequent parent-child communication studies. This volume widens the platform of parent-child communication scholarship by bringing together veteran family communication researchers and newcomers to collectively explore the frontier of parents’ and children’s communication with the world outside of home. Specifically, the volume explores: communication processes and problems of parents, children, and society in the contexts of childcare, education, healthcare, and youth sports; how parents, children and societal agents use electronic media in their interactions; and communication challenges facing stepfamilies and gay/lesbian families in their interactions outside of home. Paraphrasing the thesis of a popular book that focused on children, It Takes a Village (Clinton, 1996), this volume examines communication between and among parents, children, and some of the villagers entrusted with children’s welfare.

A Rationale for Studying Parent-Child-Societal Communication

Family communication scholars have perennially regarded families as open social systems, that is, families both affect, and are affected by, interactions with society. Parents, children, and society connect in various communication contexts as interorganizations (e.g., family units and childcare centers), intergroups (e.g., groups comprised of family members and childcare-center members such as parent/child/childcare-center administrator, parent/child/childcare worker, child/childcare worker/childcare administrator, etc.), and in interpersonal relationships (e.g., relationships between a family member and a childcare center member, such as parent/childcare worker, child/childcare worker, parent/childcare administrator, child/childcare administrator, child/classmate, etc). The media of parent-child-societal communication can include face-to-face communication, print (e.g., parents’ letters, childcare center newsletters, etc.), and electronic media (e.g., phone calls, e-mail, childcare-center web sites, childcare help-lines, television, etc.).

To date, research in the field of family communication has shed significant light on interorganizational communication between families and society via television (e.g., Bryant & Bryant, 2001), and tremendous strides have been made towards understanding communication within family systems as well as family relationships (e.g., Vangelisti, 2003). However, what is needed is a better understanding of the everyday intergroup and interpersonal interactions between parents, children, and the many societal systems to which families connect. Such an understanding should also include insights into parent-child-societal communication struggles unique to various types of families such as stepfamilies and gay/lesbian families as well as insights into the increasing role played by personal electronic media.

There are at least five reasons that support a warrant for research of communication in the everyday lives of parents, children, and societal agents/agencies: managing family-society boundaries and privacy, better handling of family-society communication problems and conflicts, managing family-society status inequalities, dealing with differences in communication standards and styles between families and society, and coordinating systems of shared care by families and society.

Boundaries and Privacy

First, in light of the many significant interdependencies between contemporary families and societal agencies (e. g., childcare, education, healthcare, organized sports, etc.), it is important to better understand how parents, children, and society use communication to manage the many boundaries between families and society as well as protect privacy (see Petronio, 1991, 2002). As with all groups, as parents, children, and society communicate they create and manage boundaries (Putnam & Stohl, 1990). These boundaries can sometimes become blurred, potentially creating confusion and misunderstandings in situations such as during a sports practice when a “father” and “son” must communicate as “coach” and “player,” or during a homework session when a “parent” and “child” interact as “teacher” and “student,” or during a medical consultation when a parent asks a pediatrician for his or her opinion “as a parent.” Some family-society boundaries are legal and can determine who can interact with whom about what, such as laws that prevent noncustodial stepparents from gaining medical information or school information about stepchildren.

Boundaries between families and society separate what is considered private or “family business” from what is public and available for display (Petronio, 1991, 2002). Many questions arise concerning, on the one hand, how to maintain family privacy, and, on the other hand, how to provide and secure information needed by systems outside of home, especially with societal agencies upon which families depend for essential services and support (i.e., childcare, education, medical, governmental, etc.). For stepfamilies, foster families, and gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered families, managing privacy can be especially difficult due to legalities and clashing familial and societal values.

Conflicts and Communication Problems

Second, communication is used to manage the wide array of inevitable conflicts and problematic communication episodes between parents, children, and the outside world. Such situations can include, for example, managing value differences between parents, children, and childcare agencies over ways of directing children’s behaviors, managing clashes between parents, children, and healthcare agencies concerning optimal healthcare approaches, managing differences between parents, children, and athletic coaches concerning children’s athletic development, managing clashes between gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered family units and governmental institutions over childcare rights, and even managing clashes between parents, children and society over the extent to which to include children in conversations that directly affect them (children as full participants, limited participants, or left out).

Well-managed and effective communication between parents, children, and society can be an incredibly positive force, but mismanaged communication can become a catalyst for a host of negative outcomes that has led, in some cases, to physical injury to parents and societal agents (e.g., see Heinzmann, 2008), and although rare, death (e. g., the case of a father who beat another father to death during a hockey practice over a boy’s rough play as the team watched, see Hockey Dad, 2008).

Status Inequalities

Third, as parents and children communicate with the outside world, they are not always on equal footing with societal agencies. Parents turn to many agencies outside of home for assistance, support, and specialized knowledge and expertise. For example, by virtue of their extensive education, specialized training, and experience, medical doctors (relative to parents and children) bring greater relative informational status to parent-child-physician interactions. However, caring for the health of a child is ultimately the parents’ responsibility and, although they may lack scientific medical information, parents do bring particularized insights into their children. Thus, children’s healthcare is best regarded as a coordinated endeavor between children, parents, and medical practitioners, where coordination failures (sometimes and in part due to status conflicts) can pose significant risks and dangers. Similarly, successfully educating children is a coordinated effort between parents, children, and teachers, where, for example, status clashes between parents and teachers can compromise educational quality and jeopardize educational success.

Interactional Differences

Fourth, rules shaping family interaction at home (backstage) can mirror or be at odds with rules shaping interaction in public (front-stage) (e.g., Goffman, 1959, 1963; Sennett, 1976). For example, adults’ occasional use of vulgar language might be acceptable behavior in some homes, but is generally not acceptable behavior for parents (or children) while interacting at school (e.g., see Sennett, 1980). When familial and traditional-societal standards of politeness and decorum are in sync, this can result in positive social attributions during interaction outside of home (“Your children are so polite!”), whereas inconsistencies between familial and societal standards can lead to negative social attributions (“Your children are rude.”). Unfortunately, today it is not uncommon for children to hear parents publicly using vulgar language while watching children’s sporting events, or for children to hear vulgar language on television shows. In all cases, children are observing and learning about what constitutes effective and appropriate public communication as they view the adults communicating around them.

Shared Care

Fifth and finally, it is of particular importance to begin to understand communication between parents, children, and the primary societal systems upon which parents and children depend: childcare, healthcare, education, and recreation, to name but a few.

With respect to childcare, parents employed outside of home must extend their authority, in loco parentis, to outside care systems (see Sennett, 1980). Parents count on this care to be of high quality, and expect that care will be in concert with their values and styles. To secure this care, parents can turn to family members, and/or childcare systems outside of home. Parents are, of course, the primary participants in initiating and obtaining agreements of care, but children are also participants in this process and their point of view should be considered. Once agreements of care are struck, parents, children, and day-care agents and day-care participants begin to create a network of communication structures that serve communication functions including surveillance, information sharing, social influence, and so on. These structures can be many and varied: “daycare relationships,” (e.g., with daycare workers, other parents, etc.), “daycare groups” (e.g., advisory boards) as well as in “day-care organizational communication” (e.g., reading daycare-center handbooks). Parents communicating with a daycare center may also interact with organizations affiliated with the center (e.g., parks and recreation systems that sponsor programs, museums, governmental and professional agencies that regulate and monitor operations, etc.).

Since we know that children’s well-being is dependent on the effectiveness of parent-child interaction in the home, when daycare outside of home is utilized, by extension, children’s well-being also relies in large part on the effectiveness of interaction within a given childcare system. However, since parents and daycare providers share childcare, it is important to better understand the contribution that parent-child-daycare center interactions have on children’s well-being.

New Directions in Parent-Child-Societal Communication

The volume seeks to open research in these five areas as well as offer a research agenda for future studies. The chapters in the volume represent work selected from proposals received in response to a national competitive call as well as invited research commentaries written by leading communication experts having expertise in the contexts of childcare and education, health communication, family media, and stepfamilies. The volume is not intended to be an exhaustive treatment of parent-child-societal communication, rather the volume seeks to introduce communication scholars, students, and interested parties to parent-child-societal communication, draw attention to various significant lines of inquiry, and, similar to Socha and Stamp (1995), begin to build a platform for future inquiry. The volume is divided into four sections: childcare and education; health and recreation; families, society and electronic media, and evolving family-societal relationships.

Childcare and Education

Families depend on societal agencies outside of home for the daily care and education of children. Section one of the volume is comprised of five chapters that focus on parent-child-societal communication in the contexts of childcare and elementary education. Weigel and Martin (chapter 2: Connecting Two Worlds of Childhood: How Do Parents, Childcare Providers, and Children Communicate?) open the section with an overview that seeks to begin to address some fundamental questions: What is the nature of the communication between parents and child-care providers (e.g., frequency, content, behaviour, channels, affect, etc.)? What factors enable and hinder parent childcare-provider communication? What questions remain in understanding parent childcare-provider communication? Weigel and Martin report the results of a survey study of parents and childcare providers. Results suggest that parent childcare-provider com...

Table of contents

• COMMUNICATION SERIES
• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• About the Contributors
• 1 A New Frontier for Family Communication Studies
• Section I Childcare & Education
• Section II Health & Wellness
• Section III Parent-Child-Society Relationships & Media
• Section IV Evolving Caregiving Roles & Relationships
• Epilogue Circulation and Coordination
• Author Index
• Subject Index