Sibling Rivalry: Children are stressed when fathers play favourites

Research by Megan Gilligan, a Purdue doctoral student in sociology, and Jill Suitor, a professor of sociology, found that sibling Baby Boomers are likely to be more stressed by their fathers' favouring one over another than by their mothers' doing so. 

Credit: Purdue University photo /Mark Simons

"It didn't matter who fathers favored. When favouritism was perceived there was tension among siblings, especially daughters," said Megan Gilligan, a Purdue doctoral student in sociology who is lead author on the article.

"Often the role of fathers is overlooked in these older relationships, but what we found shows dads do matter."

This research, which is published in the July issue of the Journal of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, looked at 137 later-life families with both parents still alive when the data was collected in 2008.

The average age of the 341 siblings was 49, and they were asked about tension among each other and the perceived favouritism by their parents.

The parents were in their 70s and 80s, and the fathers were an average of three years older than the mothers.

"The importance of fathers' favouritism may come from these older adults noticing many of their friends' fathers no longer living, so they may value their dads even more than before; they realise their time together is limited," said Jill Suitor, a professor of sociology and article co-author.

Previous research by Suitor, Gilligan and Karl Pillemer, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University, showed that if mothers favoured a child, it caused sibling tension.

However, that work focused only on mothers' favouritism. By looking at both living parents in this recent article, the researchers were able to evaluate the consequences of favouritism from both parents.

This research is based on the survey data from the Within-Family Difference Study, led by Suitor and Pillemer to evaluate the role favoritism plays in adult family relationships.

The data for the 13-year project were collected in the Boston metropolitan area. The project is funded by the US National Institute on Aging.

"The implications of these findings will be important to practitioners," Pillemer said. "We often think of the family as a single unit, and this reminds us that individual parent and child relationships differ and each family is very complex. Favouritism from the father could mean something different than favouritism from the mother. We suggest that clinicians who work with families on later-life issues be aware of this complexity and look for such types of individual relationships as they advise families on care giving, legal and financial issues."

The difference in this research could be the result of the role fathers played in this older generation.

"Fathers are important figures in families, and the father-child relationship is sometimes more tenuous than the mother-child tie," Suitor said.

"Mothers are often more open and affectionate with their children, whereas fathers have sometimes been found to be more critical, leading offspring to be more concerned when fathers favour some children over others."

This also could play a role in why daughters experience more tension with their siblings when fathers favour them.

"The gender difference may occur because fathers, as other studies have shown, often invest more in their sons, thus, the favouritism shown toward daughters may violate these norms and result in greater sibling tension," Gilligan said.

"For these reasons, when adult children perceive their fathers as engaging in favouritism, there may be greater concern about competition for his affection and support, resulting in higher levels of sibling tension."

Gilligan and Suitor also said that these values and norms may have changed since the Baby Boomer generation.

Suitor, Pillemer and Gilligan plan to extend the present project to include interviewing the Baby Boomers about their own adult children.

More information: Differential Effects of Perceptions of Mothers' and Fathers' Favoritism on Sibling Tension in Adulthood, Megan Gilligan, J. Jill Suitor, Seoyoun Kim, and Karl Pillemer, Journal of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 2013.

ABSTRACT
Objectives. We examine the differential effects of perceived maternal and paternal favouritism in adulthood on sibling tensions in adulthood.

Method. Data used in the analysis were collected from 341 adult children nested within 137 later-life families as part of the Within-Family Differences Study.

Results. Adult children's perceptions that their fathers currently favored any offspring in the family predicted reports of tension with their siblings, whereas perceptions of mothers' favouritism did not. Fathers' favouritism was a stronger predictor of daughters' than sons' reports of sibling tension.

Discussion. These findings contribute to a growing body of research demonstrating the consequences of parental favouritism in adulthood. Equally important, they demonstrate that perceptions of fathers' current favouritism plays an even greater role in shaping their adult children's sibling relations than do mothers' favouritism.

Fathers who bond with children help keep Partner's Relationship /Marriage strong

Sharing housework is the key, as is open communication with your spouse and /or partner.

For dads aiming at marital bliss, a new study suggests just two factors are especially important: being engaged with the kids, for sure—but also doing a fair share of the household chores.

In other words, just taking the children outside for a game of catch won't cut it.

"In our study, the wives thought that the father's involvement with the kids and his participation in household work, are all inter-related and worked together to improve marital quality," said Adam Galovan, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Missouri, in Columbia.

"They think that being a good father involves more than just doing things involved in the care of children."

Adam Galovan

Galovan found that wives and partners, feel more cared for when husbands are involved with their children, yet helping out with the day-to-day responsibilities of running the household also matters.

But Galovan was surprised to find that, how husbands and wives divide the work, doesn't seem to matter much.

Partners, husbands and wives are happier when they share parenting and household responsibilities, but the chores don't have to be divided equally, according to the study.

What matters is that both parents are actively participating in both chores and child-rearing.

Doing household chores and being engaged with the children seem to be important ways for husbands to connect with their partners, and that connection is related to better relationships, Galovan explained.

The research was recently published in the Journal of Family Issues it can also be found on the MU News site.

For the study, the researchers tapped data from a 2005 study that pulled marriage licenses of couples married for less than one year from the Utah Department of Health.

Researchers looked at every third or fourth marriage license over a six-month period.

Couples indicated which spouse was generally responsible for completing 20 common household tasks— or if both or neither of them were responsible.

Fathers rated their involvement in their children's lives and mothers noted how involved they felt their husbands were with the kids. Both spouses rated how happy they were with how they divided household tasks and with their marriage.

Men and women differed in how they reported marital quality. For wives, the father-child relationship and father involvement was most important, followed by satisfaction with how the household work was accomplished.

For husbands, satisfaction with the division of family work came first, followed by their wife's feelings about the father-child relationship, and then the degree of involvement the dad had with his children.

Fathers and Teenagers: Fathers' Previous Desire for Children Affects Relationship

The relationships of fathers to their teenage children are apparently influenced by the nature of their previous desire for children.

The more acute that this feeling is, the more closely fathers engage with their children at an everyday level.

This is the conclusion of a study conducted by the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Basel.

This is the first time that a study has examined the perspectives of both fathers and teenagers regarding their relationship.

Diana Baumgarten

For her investigation, the sociologist and gender researcher Dr. Diana Baumgarten conducted a detailed evaluation of long interviews with eight fathers between the ages of 46 and 58, as well as with eight children between 16 and 21 years of age.

The respondents live in a common household in German-speaking Switzerland.

The questions to the men concentrated on approaches to fatherhood, everyday arrangements, and relationships with teenagers.

The teenagers had to report on the details of their daily lives and their relationships with their fathers.

"Equivalent," "Supplementary," and "Satellite" Fathers
One result of the study is that the fathers' earlier desire for children played a significant role in their relationships with their children.

The more aware the father was of his desire for children, the clearer perception the father has today of his relationship to the child.

Such "equivalent" fathers assume more restrictions and burdens upon themselves, such as a career trajectory that develops more slowly.

They are also more likely to see the teenager as an individual counterpart than those that the author describes as "supplementary" and "satellite" fathers.

Activities and Exchange of Views
In the relationship between fathers and their teenage children, the author encountered the "activity norm."

Especially fathers who are less present for their children on an everyday level have the entitlement to do as much as possible with their children.

While mothers tend to live their relationships with their children on an everyday level, fathers operate under the norm that they must always develop their relationship through special and extraordinary activities.

Another notable result is the great value accorded to communication and exchanges of views. Prior studies have made this point for mother-child relationships, and have disregarded the communicative value of fathers.

The author also found through interviews with fathers and teenagers that motherhood is depicted as the model of parental care and is often measured against fatherhood.

However, distinct concepts of fatherhood are also expressed in the study and thus, also concepts of masculinity.

Journal Reference:

1. Diana Baumgarten, Väter von Teenagern. Sichtweisen von Vätern und ihren jugendlichen Kindern auf ihre Beziehung. Budrich Unipress, 2013

Knowing the Gender of Unborn Child Helps Fathers Bond with Offspring

Dads who find out the sex of their unborn child and give him or her a name may find it easier to connect emotionally with their baby, a study conducted at the University of Birmingham has found.

The report, entitled "The Moral Habitus of Fatherhood: A Study of How Men Negotiate the Moral Demands of Becoming a Father," funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, looked at men's experiences of, and feelings about, becoming a father and mapped their journeys from the discovery of the pregnancy to the early months of fatherhood.

Jonathan Ives

Dr Jonathan Ives, a senior lecturer in the centre for Medicine, Ethics, Society and History at the University of Birmingham, who carried out the research, said: "Serious consideration needs to be given to how men can be empowered to become the fathers they want to be.

"Healthcare workers who are involved in this process need to engage with men's views on what it is to be a good man, a good partner, and a good father and help them achieve an appropriate balance between their own needs and interests and those of their partner and future children."

The study found that some men's understanding of what it means to be a good man and/or a good partner could act as a barrier to being drawn into, or actively seeking involvement in antenatal or postnatal consultation, but that "this is not necessarily demonstrative of a lack of commitment to fatherhood, but merely a different construction of the fatherhood role in that context".

"Helping men effect an 'active transformation into positive fatherhood' may require helping them to reconcile their moral sense of how they ought to act as a partner and as a man, with how they need to act as a father and a father-to-be," the report states.

"Encouraging fathers to become actively involved, and drawing them in, may require more than making them feel welcome and creating space for them to talk, but also giving them explicit permission to become actively involved."

The research found that scans helped to make their partner's pregnancy more real for men but "it was discovering the gender of their child, and giving him/her a name that tended to enable men to feel emotionally connected, because it allowed them to think of the unborn child as a person whom one can father, and with whom a relationship could be developed and a future imagined".

Dr Ives followed 11 men over a period of 9 months, from the first scan to 8 weeks after the birth of their child. The ages of participants ranged from 22 to 58.

Jason Cole, one of the dads who took part in the research, said: "I really wanted to know the gender of our first child.

My partner wasn't fussed. She was happy either way but I really wanted to know. I don't know why. As soon as we found out she was a girl, from about 20 weeks, we named her Molly and I think it did help me prepare for her and connect with her once she was born."

Mr Cole, who lives in Devon, is happy to discuss his experiences with the press. He and his partner are now expecting their second child – also a girl.

More information: www.birmingham.ac.… oject-1.aspx

Why Some Fathers Are raising the Baby - report

A century old mystery as to why, for some animals, it's the father rather than the mother that takes care of their young has been cracked by researchers at the University of Sheffield.

Experts from the University, in collaboration with the University of Bath and Veszprém (Hungary) found that role reversal was caused by an imbalance in the numbers of males relative to females.

The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications. Darwin noted in 1871 that in most animals, it is the females that spend most time looking after the young, whilst males focus on competing with each other for females.

Evolutionary biologists argued that this was due to the female investing significant amounts of energy in producing eggs, and in the case of mammals, giving birth, and so it is in their interests to ensure their offspring's survival by caring for them.

However, in some species, such as seahorses, the sex roles are reversed where the females produce the eggs but then leave it to their male mates to care for their offspring.

Dr András Liker, Marie Curie Research Fellow from the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, said: "Sex-role reversal has been a formidable puzzle for evolutionary biologists ever since Darwin. Our study is the first supporting the idea that sex ratio plays an important part in the evolution of role reversal."

The researchers studied birds where the sex roles were reversed and found there was a higher ratio of males to females in the population, compared with the usual situation where females care for offspring.

Professor Tamás Székely, Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Bath, explained: "The research group has investigated sex role reversal for over 20 years, and was extremely pleasing to see such a clear cut result.

"Mathematical models suggest that these animals' behaviour is strongly influenced by their social environment, and our findings support these predictions.

"When there are lots of males in a population, it's harder to find females, so it benefits males to stay with their mate and look after the young.

"However, the females often take advantage of this and leave the male holding the baby, whilst they go and find another mate."

Females in the sex role reversed species also take on the traditional male role of being bigger and compete with each other for males.

The role reversal isn't usually seen in mammals: since males can't produce milk it's not as easy for them to take over the parenting completely.

However changes in sex role behaviour have been observed in humans when the sex ratio is imbalanced.

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Sheffield.

The secret to a longer life - Fatherhood?

Being a parent has many benefits, but could it actually prolong your life?

The complete answer is, Perhaps. According to researchers who spent 10 years studying more than 130,000 retired men age 50 and over, the number of cardiovascular-related deaths was 17 percent higher among the childless than among dads.

Here's what you should know:

What were these researchers studying?
Dr. Michael Eisenberg and his team at Stanford University set out to shed more light on the known connection between male infertility and health problems like testicular cancer, according to Britain's Daily Mail.

 So in 1996, Eisenberg began following 135,000 men over the age of 50 who were married or formerly married; some had children, others didn't. He then tracked heir death rates over the course of 10 years.

What did they discover?
"Childless men were more likely to die during the follow-up period than fathers," says Alice Park at TIME. But the most surprising finding?

"Most of the deaths were heart related." That was a shocker to researchers, who thought they'd find higher rates of cancer deaths.

Why would childless men be more susceptible to heart disease?
Researchers don't know how many of the men were childless by choice or because they were infertile, but infertility can be linked to heart disease.

"Infertile men tend to have abnormal testicular function," says Park, and the testes produce testosterone.

"Abnormal testosterone levels may cause HDL, or 'good' cholesterol, to drop." Perhaps, Eisenberg posits, "this impaired testicular function, which is [showing up] as infertility early in life, sets the stage for a higher risk of cardiovascular events later in life."

Is everyone sold on this theory?
No. "I lean toward another theory, myself," writes Bruce Goldman at Scope. "Having kids is just plain good for you."

Perhaps "the cumulative blessings accruing from taking care of kids [outweighs] the acute brain damage arising from those early sleepless nights," and makes dads healthier in the long run.

A father's love is one of the greatest influences on personality development

A father's love contributes as much -- and sometimes more -- to a child's development as does a mother's love. That is one of many findings in a new large-scale analysis of research about the power of parental rejection and acceptance in shaping our personalities as children and into adulthood.

"In our half-century of international research, we've not found any other class of experience that has as strong and consistent effect on personality and personality development as does the experience of rejection, especially by parents in childhood," says Ronald Rohner of the University of Connecticut, co-author of the new study in Personality and Social Psychology Review.

"Children and adults everywhere -- regardless of differences in race, culture, and gender -- tend to respond in exactly the same way when they perceived themselves to be rejected by their caregivers and other attachment figures."

Looking at 36 studies from around the world that together involved more than 10,000 participants, Rohner and co-author Abdul Khaleque found that in response to rejection by their parents, children tend to feel more anxious and insecure, as well as more hostile and aggressive toward others.

The pain of rejection -- especially when it occurs over a period of time in childhood -- tends to linger into adulthood, making it more difficult for adults who were rejected as children to form secure and trusting relationships with their intimate partners.

The studies are based on surveys of children and adults about their parents' degree of acceptance or rejection during their childhood, coupled with questions about their personality dispositions.

Moreover, Rohner says, emerging evidence from the past decade of research in psychology and neuroscience is revealing that the same parts of the brain are activated when people feel rejected as are activated when they experience physical pain.

"Unlike physical pain, however, people can psychologically re-live the emotional pain of rejection over and over for years," Rohner says.

When it comes to the impact of a father's love versus that of a mother, results from more than 500 studies suggest that while children and adults often experience more or less the same level of acceptance or rejection from each parent, the influence of one parent's rejection -- oftentimes the father's -- can be much greater than the other's.

A 13-nation team of psychologists working on the International Father Acceptance Rejection Project has developed at least one explanation for this difference: that children and young adults are likely to pay more attention to whichever parent they perceive to have higher interpersonal power or prestige.

So if a child perceives her father as having higher prestige, he may be more influential in her life than the child's mother. Work is ongoing to better understand this potential relationship.

One important take-home message from all this research, Rohner says, is that fatherly love is critical to a person's development.

The importance of a father's love should help motivate many men to become more involved in nurturing child care. Additionally, he says, widespread recognition of the influence of fathers on their children's personality development should help reduce the incidence of "mother blaming" common in schools and clinical setting.

"The great emphasis on mothers and mothering in America has led to an inappropriate tendency to blame mothers for children's behaviour problems and maladjustment when, in fact, fathers are often more implicated than mothers in the development of problems such as these."

Related Link: FathersNet

Autism: Link Found In Gene Mutations From Father

The number of Americans diagnosed with autism has skyrocketed since 2002. Now it affects every one in 88 children.

One of the biggest barriers to finding an effective treatment is that the cause of autism isn't known but biotechnology advances are shedding new light on the possible role of genetics.

"Ten years ago it was as if we were looking through binoculars, when we were looking at autism through a microscope, and now it's like looking at it in high definition," Andy Shih, vice president of scientific affairs for the advocacy group Autism Speaks, reported.

Now three separate studies, all published on Thursday in the journal Nature, have identified several gene mutations, many inherited from fathers, that may play a role.

"There's no one gene that causes autism," James Sutcliffe, co-author of one study and an associate professor of molecular physiology at Vanderbilt University stated.

"But what these studies do show is that several genetic mutations increase the risk of getting autism and different mutations may affect people in a different way."

The genes are likely inherited through the paternal line because as a man ages, his sperm cells are constantly dividing, which provides more opportunity for mutations to occur.

Women, on the other hand, are born with all of the egg cells they will have for life.

Each study found multitudes of mutated genes in autistic children but among the three, only two genes were found in more than one patient, suggesting to researchers that they may be the biggest risk factors.


"That is like throwing a dart at a dart board with 21,000 spots and hitting the same one twice," Dr. Matthew State, co-author of the second study and a professor of psychiatry at the Child Study Centre, Yale, told reporters. "The chances that this gene is related to autism risk are something like 99.9999 percent."


Some Opposition
Clearly, some researchers aren't considering this the breakthrough the study authors claim.

"This is a great beginning, and I'm impressed with the work, but we don't know the cause of these rare mutations, or even their levels in the general population," Aravinda Chakravarti, researcher at the John Hopkins Institute of Genetic Medicine, replied.

"I'm not saying it's not worth it to follow up these findings, but I am saying it's going to be a hard slog."

Approximately 15 percent of all autistic children will have some form of these genetic mutations, according to one of the studies but researchers said diagnosing autism by the gene mutations is still a long way off.

"The genes highlighted are clearly the most convincing susceptibility genes that have been identified so far, but they only explain a small picture of autism," Dr. Mark Daly, coauthor of Sutcliffe's study and chief of the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit (ATGU) at Massachusetts General Hospital, reported.

Future research will focus on identifying other mutations that could play a role, researchers said.

Going Forward
"Now we have a real path forward," State said. "As you start to accumulate these individual genes that you know are related, that opens the door to understanding the biology. Once you know the gene, you can examine the protein it makes. Then, even in people who don't have the damaged gene, adding that protein may help because a deficit in that protein might result in their autism via a different pathway."

Autism: Researchers Continue to hunt for causes

For many families, the quest for the causes of autism has grown more urgent with the news that the estimated prevalence of autism grew by 23% from 2006 to 2008, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report out last week.

In most cases, however, scientists can't tell parents what caused their child's autism, says Thomas Insel, director of the National Institutes of Mental Health. In large part, the causes of autism — which is likely not one disease, but a group of conditions with related symptoms — remain a mystery.

For years, scientists had only a few clues about the condition, noticing that autism is about four times as common in boys as in girls, for example.

Recently, scientists have found a number of risk factors for autism, many of which point toward problems that develop very early in life, such as during pregnancy or delivery, or even during the process of creating eggs and sperm, says Craig Newschaffer, a professor at Philadelphia's Drexel University.

To better understand causes of autism, researchers at four major universities are following 1,200 mothers of autistic children through a project called the EARLI study, or the Early Autism Risk Longitudinal Investigation.

Because researchers know that these moms are at high risk of having a second autistic child, they closely follow the women's subsequent pregnancies, testing blood, urine, hair, even vacuuming dust from the women's homes, says Newschaffer, one of the study's lead researchers.

Researchers ask pregnant women to keep lists of any illnesses, since infections during pregnancy are suspected of playing a role in autism.

Doctors can confidently reassure parents that one thing doesn't cause autism — vaccines, says Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Nearly two dozen studies have failed to find a link between autism and vaccines, whether given alone or in combination.

Researchers have clues to other causes:

Genes. About 15% to 20% of autistic children have a genetic mutation that causes their disorder, Insel says. Certain genetic disorders, such as Fragile X syndrome and Rett syndrome, are well-known for increasing the risk of autism.

Even when genes are the main contributor to autism, however, it's possible that most children have a unique mutation or set of mutations, says David Amaral, research director of the University of California-Davis MIND Institute.

Family history. If parents have one child with autism, the risk of having a second child diagnosed with the disorder is nearly 20%, according to a landmark study from U.C.-Davis. Among those with two autistic children, the risk of having a third is 32%, study author Sally Ozonoff says.

Environmental pollution. One California study published last year found that babies whose mothers lived near a highway while pregnant were more likely to be diagnosed as autistic.

Older parents. Both older father and mothers are at higher risk of having autistic children, Newschaffer says. Research from Israel and the Harvard School of Public Health also suggests that infertility treatments, which are more often used among older patients, are linked to a higher risk of autism.

Prematurity and low birthweight. An October study in Pediatrics found that, among babies born weighing less than about 4½ pounds, 5% had been diagnosed as autistic by age 21.

Medications. Many studies now show that a seizure treatment called valproic acid can increase the risk of autism in children exposed before birth. A single study published last year found a higher risk among children exposed prenatally to antidepressants. Using prenatal vitamins is also linked to a lower risk of autism.

Closely spaced pregnancies. In a 2011 study, children who were born less than one year after an older sibling were three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism, compared with children born three years after their mom's last pregnancy.

PAS: Parental Alienation Ayndrome and Divorced parents

The American Psychiatric Association is contemplating adding something called "parental alienation syndrome" (PAS) to the new edition of the DSM, scheduled to be published in May 2013, and the question has launched a national lobbying in the US and letter-writing campaigns on both sides.

Angry letters and editorials should not play any part in a debate about mental health and custody disputes but the fact these are being listened to tells you most of what you need to know about the validity of PAS.

What is parental alienation syndrome? William Bernet, a professor of psychiatry at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and an advocate for its inclusion in the DSM-5, describes it as "a mental condition in which a child, usually one whose parents are engaged in a high conflict divorce, allies himself or herself strongly with one parent, and rejects a relationship with the other parent, without legitimate justification."

Recognising Parental Alienation

There is no doubt that an ugly divorce can affect kids' relationship with their parents or cause children to choose sides, often in anger. In fact, that probably happens more often than not.

But Bernet and others who argue for adding PAS to the new edition of DMS, the official catalogue of mental health, want to see it recognized as a legitimate mental health disorder because it will "spur health insurance coverage, stimulate more systematic research, lend credence to [the] charge of parental alienation in court, and raise the odds that children would get timely treatment."

In other words, they want to affix a name, some blame, and also a price tag on a broad range of child responses to a custody fight (some may be perfectly justified and some may not) in the hopes of expanding its use in court.

There are downsides to including PAS in the DSM. A minimum of three participants are needed to diagnose PAS therefore it looks less like a mental health disorder than an epidemic.

It assumes that one unbalanced person (the mother) brainwashes or unduly influences, a second unbalanced or suggestable person (the child) into telling lies about a third person (the father).

Simply because a number of parents have experienced the frustration of blocked visitation rights and unreturned phone calls, doesn't mean that this conduct is the result of a medical "syndrome."

Joan S. Meier, a professor of clinical law at George Washington University School of Law, has explained it this way:

"PAS is a label that offers a particular explanation for a breach in relationship between a child and parent, but insofar as that breach could be explained in other, more rational, ways, it is not in itself a medical or psychological diagnosis (a certainty) so much as a particular legal hypothesis."

Read more about PAS here

Why Mothers are not fully engaged by TV shows - a media concern

A TV media company recently conducted an interesting research with over 400 mothers who have children under the age of 12 living in their homes.

They found that:

• 75% of respondents watch certain TV shows with their children.
• 50% of respondents indicated that they’re likely to be doing other things while watching television with their children. (This could mean that although they are watching the program, they aren’t really engaging in it.)
• Women with very small children indicated that it was “impossible for anyone to watch anything on the TV when the kids are up.”
• Women with older children experienced phases of “family TV viewing” where they watched shows targeted to their kids’ age group between ages 4-7. (Shows selected by the children or chosen to entertain the children)
• Interestingly, as the kids get older, women become more engaged in the programming as they come to share favourite shows with their kids, such as “American Idol” and “Survivor.”
• The respondents indicated that ultimately they can only truly engage in what’s on the television when their children aren’t present. (This was a consistent response among all respondents regardless of the age of the children.)
• 81% of our survey respondents stated that they have “their shows” that they watch during what they deem to be their “me time.” This offers them an “escape” from the daily pressures of work and family.
• Women are also prone to “time-shifting” their preferred programming by recording their favourite shows or by visiting On Demand network websites, to re-watch shows or catch episodes they’ve missed.

What does this mean?

According to the research, if mothers are watching TV with their children they are not probably not engaging with the programs that their children are enjoying.

I think its easy to conclude that if they aren’t engaging with the programs, they are definitely not engaging with the commercials, which is more of a concern for the media ad sales people than the mothers.

My greatest concern in all this is that mothers, fathers and family members are not engaging with each other or their children, even if they appear to be sharing the experience of coming together, to form an 'audience' to watch a specific TV show.