Is Daily Workload and Parental Screen Time Affecting Parent-Child Relationships?

Abstract

As both work and screens are big parts of the daily life of parents, it is important to understand the impact they can have on family relationships. The aim of this paper was to investigate how parents’ daily workload affected their screen time in the afternoon, and how this screen time affected their relationship with their children. I chose to use the experience sampling method to collect data from N = 37 parents in Norway over a period of ten working days. Some of my results were marginally significant: The daily workload of the parents affected the parents’ work-related- and personal screen time in the afternoon. Additionally, work-related screen time had a significant positive effect on the parent-child relationship. While there were a few marginally significant findings and significant findings, all my hypotheses were rejected. Future research may benefit from larger samples, include different work-related stressors, explore possible moderator variables, and have more specific screen time variables.