New directions in parenting and child health information? The role of generative artificial intelligence

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is rapidly becoming part of everyday information environments, yet little is known about whether and why parents use it in sensitive family domains such as parenting and child health. Guided by technology-acceptance, risk-information-seeking, and AI-literacy perspectives, the present study distinguished three explanatory pathways: acceptance-related orientations, literacy-related beliefs, and child- and family-related need or strain. Because no established measure was available for these family-specific contexts, the study also examined whether newly developed items differentiated parenting-related GenAI use, child-health-related GenAI use, AI attitudes, and AI literacy-related beliefs. Cross-sectional online survey data were collected from N = 457 German-speaking parents and caregivers of children in Grades 3 to 6 in Switzerland. Parental GenAI use was low in both domains, with mean scores close to the lower bound of the scale for parenting-related use (M = 1.26) and child-health-related use (M = 1.47), whereas AI attitudes were moderate (M = 2.98) and AI literacy-related beliefs comparatively high (M = 4.05). More intensive use was rare (parenting: 4.8%; child health: 8.1%). The four-dimensional measurement model fit the data better than more parsimonious alternatives. Across the main multivariate models, AI attitudes were the most consistent correlate of parental GenAI use, whereas AI literacy-related beliefs and broad child- and family-related need indicators showed weaker, more selective, and domain-specific associations. The findings suggest that GenAI is not yet a routine parenting or child-health information resource for most parents, but that emerging use is already structured by domain and by parents’ broader evaluative stance toward AI.