Parents' Use of Content-Based TV Advisories

Objective. To identify and profile the types of parents most and least likely to use the content-based TV ratings in their decision making and the manner by which ratings are incorporated into strategies or rules about television usage. Design. The primary rule-making and rule-enforcing parent in 878 households with children in second (M age = 7.2), fifth (M age = 10.8), or eighth (M age = 13.7) grade were surveyed. Prominent parent-oriented (childrearing practices, perceptions of TV effects, education level, gender match) and child-oriented factors (cognitive abilities, TV consumption levels, age) reported to influence parental mediation were assessed and analyzed. Results. The parents most likely to use the ratings were mothers or fathers with a high school level education, who typically discipline through deprivation and believe that television can have significant behavioral- and affective-level effects on their children. Their children tended to be young, male, academically average or learning disabled, and moderate to high consumers of television. Parents used the ratings to restrict children's consumption of objectionable content by establishing restrictive viewing hours and forbidding the viewing of specific programs. Conclusions. The ubiquitous nature of television has made it increasingly difficult to limit children's access to ideas with which their caregivers disagree. The government-inspired, industry-initiated TV ratings with content descriptors are providing some families with a viable parenting tool for mediation.