This study aimed to understand what factors the mothers of infants consider to be important when choosing screen media programs for their children, and to investigate whether those features differ according to maternal socio-demographic characteristics (i.e., age, education level, employment status, and family income). The study participants comprised 948 mothers who were the primary caregivers and had at least one child aged 4-6. They were asked to select three of the following aspects as critical criteria for determining if a given screen media program is appropriate for infants: (a) contents suitable to the child’s developmental level, (b) behaviors of characters, (c) appearance of characters, (d) visual aspects of program, (e) duration of screen media program, (f) whether the screen media program includes instructive contents, and (g) whether the program leads to opportunities for conversations among family members and activities with children. Multiple response frequency analysis and multiple response cross-analysis were used to analyze the mothers’ responses. The results revealed that the majority of the mothers reported that ‘contents suitable to the child’s developmental level’ represented the first-ranked criterion for selecting screen media programs for their child, which was followed by ‘behaviors of characters,’ and ‘whether the screen media program includes instructive contents.’ However, such criteria for screen media programs for infants differed according to maternal age, education level, employment status, and family income. These outcomes suggest that different information needs to be provided based on maternal characteristics in order to help mothers determine the quality of screen media programs for their infants.

Objectives: This study aimed to analyze the effects of COVID-19-related stress, parental efficacy, and cognitive flexibility on depression of mothers with school-aged children and to examine a moderated mediation model.Methods: Data on cognitive flexibility, parental efficacy, COVID-19-related stress, and depression were collected from 441 working mothers who had at least one school-aged child using the Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (CFI) and Parenting Sense of Competence (PSOC), COVID Stress/Disruption, and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scales. Data were then analyzed using SPSS 26.0, and PROCESS macro version 4.0.Results: The findings revealed that COVID-19-related stress had a significant positive influence on depression in working mothers, which was mediated by parental efficacy. A moderated mediation analysis further indicated that this indirect effect varied depending upon the mothers’ sense of control a sub-factor of cognitive flexibility. Therefore, when mothers perceived they were unlikely to exercise any control over changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, their parental efficacy exerted a greater mediating effect.Conclusion: Results suggest that interventions reducing COVID-19-related stress and increasing parental efficacy could alleviate depression among working mothers with school-aged children. Furthermore, cognitive interventions could be effective in helping those working mothers experiencing a low level of parenting efficacy due to COVID-19-related stress to perceive the demanding situation as within their control.

This study aimed to investigate the mediating effect of the screen media time of young children on the relationship between mothers’ reasons for allowing young children to use screen media and their children’s ability to regulate screen media. The participants consisted of 614 children aged 5-6 (312 boys and 302 girls), and all the survey questions were answered by their mothers. Descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping analysis were employed to analyze the data using SPSS 25.0 and Mplus 8.6. The results were as follows. First, mothers’ educational and ritualized reasons for allowing young children to use screen media and children’s screen media time directly affected young children’s ability to regulate screen media. Second, children’s screen media time mediated the relationship between mothers’ educational and ritualized reasons for allowing their children to use screen media and children’s ability to regulate screen media. When mothers permitted their children to use screen media for educational purposes, their children were likely to spend less time on screen media usage which, in turn, increased their ability to regulate screen media. Conversely, the more mothers allowed their children to use screen media for ceremonial purposes, the more time their children spent on screen media and the less ability they had to regulate screen media usage. These outcomes suggest that, to improve children’s screen media regulation ability, mothers must not routinely allow their children to use screen media and should manage their children’s screen media time.