Maternal employment and children's television viewing

This study examined whether maternal employment influences three aspects of children's television use: total amount of television, television content, and children's co-viewing patterns. The study also examined whether the associations between maternal employment status and children's television use would vary by family structure or day type (weekday vs. weekend day). The analyses were conducted separately for children who were not attending kindergarten/school and children who were attending kindergarten/school. The findings indicate that for children who were not attending kindergarten/school, whether mothers worked or not was not related to how much these children watched. However, there were significant differences in children's co-viewing patterns. Children of part-time working mothers spent less time coviewing with mother or other adult(s) but more time watching television without any adult present when compared with children of unemployed mothers and children of fulltime working mothers. Overall, the relationships between maternal employment status and children's television use did not differ much by family structure or day type for these children who were not attending kindergarten/school. Among children who were attending kindergarten/school, children of part-time working mothers watched more TV in total, watched more violent TV, and spent more time viewing without any adult's supervision than children of unemployed mothers and children of full-time working mothers. These differences were more pronounced for single-mother families than two-parent families. The patterns of the associations between maternal employment and children's television use were similar for weekday viewing and weekend day viewing. Implications of these results were discussed.Human Development and Family Science