Mediated parent-child contact in work-separated families

Svetlana Yarosh, Gregory D. Abowd

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

58 Scopus citations

Abstract

Parents and children in families living with regular separation due to work develop strategies to manage being apart. We interviewed 14 pairs of parents and children (ages 7 - 13) from work-separated families to understand their experiences and the strategies that they use to keep their family together. Parents focus on combining scheduled synchronous and spontaneous asynchronous communication to maintain a constant presence in the life of the child. Children, on the other hand, focus on other sources of support, on other activities, and on the eventual reunion. Both the remote parent and the child rely heavily on a collocated adult to maintain awareness and contact. We compare work-separated families with other types of separation and highlight opportunities for new designs.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCHI 2011 - 29th Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Conference Proceedings and Extended Abstracts
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages1185-1194
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)9781450302289
DOIs
StatePublished - 2011

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Keywords

  • Children
  • Computer-mediated communication
  • Parents

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