Essay On Parent Child Communication

The purpose of this study is to examine how the media portrays parent-child communication about sex and the role that family structure plays in the communication between the parent and child. This area of study is important to examine as we know that the media can shape the perspectives of individuals, however it leaves us to question to what extent the media shapes conversations about sex within a family unit. We may often take for granted how our opinions are influenced by media and that we, as a society, might not acknowledge their full impact on family communication. Our hope in conducting this analysis of a television show is to discover how and why parent-child communication about sex occurs and how that relates to the family structure presented in a television show that has aired in the past 10 years. Given our limitation on time and resources, we used the Netflix database to find potential shows that could provide multiple examples of parent-child communication. We narrowed down the selection of television shows by identifying programming that features diverse family structures as to …show more content…
We found that that the show depicted three main family structures; nuclear family, single parent family, and fractured nuclear families. In the television show, Grace Bowman is the child of Tom and Kathleen and together they represent the nuclear family. Adrian Lee is the child of Cindy Lee and provide a representation of single parent families. Amy Juergens is the child of George and Anne, collectively representing the final category of fractured nuclear family. Our findings suggest that the family structure was directly linked to the level of communication between that parent and child regarding