Chinese Parental Mediation, Predictors, and Associations with Children’s Problematic Media Use: A Latent Profile Analysis

Research Findings: This study aims to examine the latent profiles of parents' mediation and their predictors, as well as links between different profiles and children's problematic media use. A total of 1415 children aged 3–6 years (47.8% boys) and their paired parents were recruited in Shanghai, China and surveyed demographic information, parents' mediation practice and marital conflict, and children's media use problems. Latent profile analyses, tests of variance, and logistic regression analyses were used for data analysis. The results indicated that: (1) four potential profiles of mediation were yielded: mother-dominated mediation, father-dominated mediation, coordinated high-level mediation, and coordinated low-level mediation; (2) there were significant associations between children's age, fathers' age, parents' educational backgrounds and marital conflict with mediation profiles; and (3) the likelihood of children experiencing problematic media use was lowest in the consistent high-level group, followed by the mother-dominated and the father-dominated group, and highest in the consistent low-level group. Practice or Policy: These findings imply that parents' digital parenting patterns are influenced by multiple factors, and that parents who are older, have less education, have older children, and experience more marital conflict should be given more support and assistance to improve parents' child-rearing and child development.