Coparenting of child media use and associations with child media limits and frequency of media use in the United States

Research on the parental mediation of child media use has not often addressed how children may have multiple caregivers, and therefore the successful management of child media use may be tied to the coordination between caregivers (i.e. coparenting). The current study examined how various coparenting behaviors surrounding child media use (i.e. support, undermining, and conflict) were linked with the consistency of child media use limit setting and the frequency of child media use. Participants included 523 U.S. parents who were married or had a relationship partner and had at least one child (M age = 6.68 years, SD = 6.01); participants completed an online survey. Results revealed that both greater supportive and undermining coparenting predicted greater consistency of media limit setting, while coparenting conflict predicted greater child media use. Moreover, these associations were maintained regardless of child age. Thus, the coordination between parents in their parenting of child media use may have important connections with how child media use may develop. Researchers, educators, clinicians, and health professionals may wish to consider how to study and assist parents in finding ways to support each other’s parenting of child media use while avoiding conflict over child media use in front of the child.