ABSTRACT
We are dubious of the arguments which have been advanced to suggest that television has no effect on viewers’ behaviour. Many of the points that have been made could be applied with an equal lack of validity to any element of the socialisation process – for example the influence of peer groups or parents on behaviour. If we applied the arguments on TV influence to the relationship between parents and children they would look something like this:
Despite the widespread view that parents do influence how their children grow up, a number of theoretical problems have been raised with this crude ‘effects’ approach, in what is obviously a very complex and highly mediated area. Research results have been inconclusive. In laboratory conditions many children were observed to be given instructions by their parents and then not to do as they were told. In other tests, children were asked if they always obeyed their parents and replied, ‘No way man’ and, You must be joking’. It was therefore concluded that children were ‘rejecting’ and ‘negotiating’ parental messages. Some commentators have gone fürther, arguing that the manner in which children are brought up has ‘no effect’ on the subsequent growth and development of the child. Indeed, they assert that the whole ‘effects’ debate may have been wrongly constituted. It seems likely that children only ‘agree’ with parents in those areas to which they are already pre-disposed. Thus parental ‘effects’ can be seen merely as the reinforcement of existing systems of beliefs and attitudes. Theorists were also concerned that the popular obsession with parenting and its influence derives from a general propensity to look back to a mythical golden age when children obeyed their parents without question. Such dwelling on a mythical past is part of the powerful ideological package assembled by the New Right in its attempt to ‘blame parents’ for wider social ills. Parents thus become one more in a long line of scapegoats such as the theatre or horror comics which have been blamed for alleged increases in violence, crime or the corruption of youth. The moral panic around parenting is a mask for the reactionary social fears of moral campaigners. We might therefore conclude that, despite an enormous research effort, no link between so-called parent socialisation effects and the subsequent behaviour of children can be found.
