#8: Coding For Child Rearing

Alice Choo (green)
Yang Zhang (purple)

Sue’s post
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.kids/browse_thread/thread/32665b5d88ffcc27/1551ef44eff22687#1551ef44eff22687
Funmum’s post
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.kids/browse_thread/thread/98630506c3319f13/46ef6101a323094a#46ef6101a323094a
Phil’s post
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.step-parents/browse_thread/thread/4dfff213af102230/a894452e07116c68?hl=en&lnk=st&q=child+raising#a894452e07116c68

For our assignment, Yang and I decided to examine posts that dealt with raising children. The first group we examined was misc.kids, where we found two threads to evaluate. The first thread we evaluated was originally posted by Sue, a mother trying to find ways to get her ten-year-old daughter to sleep in her own room. Sue was frustrated in constantly having to assuage her daughter’s fears. The second thread in misc.kids that we evaluated was by “funmum,” a mother who was bored of entertaining her two-and-a-half-year-old with the same activities every day; thus, she asked for advice as to new activities they could engage in. The last thread was in the group alt.support.step-parents. Phil, a father to thirty-month-old twins and a stepfather to a nine-and-a-half year old, was having issues with his wife as to how much of a role he should have in disciplining his stepdaughter, with whom he had lived since she was three years old. Phil wanted to know other people’s experiences in disciplining their stepchildren.


Unlike Braithwaite, the highest number of support messages we saw were informational support messages; they consisted of 100% of the posts. The other types of messages were much lower than in frequency than that of the informational support messages. Humor came in second in terms of frequency with 25% of the posts, and esteem support came in third with 20% of the posts. Emotional support, network support, and tangible assistance were not very prevalent in our study, appearing in 10%, 5%, and 0% of posts, respectively.

One reason that informational support messages dominated the threads may have been because of the online environment. According to Braithwaite, “information support…is most useful and prominent when the recipient can control the situation and put the information to use.” The original posters were all parents who could easily make use of the advice that other posters gave them. Indeed, the original posts were all focused on getting information and advice rather than any other support.

Even though emotional support was highly prevalent in Braithwaite’s study, we did not find many instances of it. Braithwaite asserts that “emotional support is more likely to be given when the recipient is experiencing distressful circumstances that are not subject to his or her control. This type of support can promote comfort and healing in such circumstances.” Contrary to Braithwaite’s observations of Support Network, Yang and I studied an environment where parents did have control over their situations; thus the need for emotional support was lessened. Indeed, parents did not seek “comfort” or “healing”; they were simply searching for possible solutions to their problems. Their posts concentrated on getting the information that they wanted rather than fulfilling emotional needs.

Esteem support was third in terms of message frequency, which matched Braithwaite’s analysis. Posters sometimes validated the original poster’s experiences. For instance, with Sue’s post about her daughter refusing to sleep alone, one poster identified with Sue’s frustration by saying, “I can see how you [Sue] would be over it!” With esteem support, posters aimed to lift the original posters’ spirits by validating their feelings and experiences.

Our findings for messages related to network support and tangible assistance were similar to those of Braithwaite. As Braithwaite mentioned, the low number of network support messages may be attributed to the fact that “members met their needs for network support simply by participating” in social networks in the first place. Because they are already engaged in a support network, they do not feel an urgent need to expand their networks. Tangible assistance was unseen in our study. Braithwaite attributes the lack of tangible assistance to the “lack of physical proximity of the participants to one another.” Because participants may be on opposite ends of the globe, tangible assistance is difficult to offer unless participants are willing to make the effort to meet each other.

Humor ended up being the second most frequent type of message that we found in our evaluations. Braithwaite notes that humor can be used “in self-depreciating ways, in sarcastic ways, and as a way to diffuse tension and decrease discomfort in early stages of relationships.” Self-depreciating and sarcastic humor were certainly evident in the posts that we examined. As a response to Phil’s concerns about how much influence he should have in disciplining his stepdaughter, one poster described her experience in raising her own stepdaughter. In mentioning how she and her husband were stricter than her stepdaughter’s biological mother, the poster said, “Somehow SD [her stepdaughter] has survived the trauma of being raised by us!” By employing humor, posters were able to build bonds with the original poster.

The four dimensions of attraction to online social support, established by Walther and Boyd, tie in neatly with our analysis of the parenting support threads. The social distance factor means that the parents feel more inclined to ask for advice in these threads because they feel there must be someone with expertise in the vast number of people connected to these threads. At least one of them will have a solution to whatever problem presented. Indeed, parents were eager to find solutions to the original poster’s problems.

Furthermore, anonymity, both perceived and real, promotes participation from both people with questions and people with solutions to come forth. People with questions do not feel embarrassed to ask their questions because they are not likely to be judged by people that they actually know in real life. People supplying answers feel more secure knowing that even if their answers are wrong, there is virtually no way they have to own up to the responsibility.

Even though a lot of the messages are not carefully crafted to create specific impressions (many messages have typos in them), interaction management is still an important factor. The messages can be read at one’s leisure, and parents do not feel obligated to stick around and answer other people’s questions. In fact, a lot of the threads have a “hit-and-run” feeling to them; posts are often short and concise. Furthermore, anyone with a question can start a thread to get solutions, and that person may then return to dormancy (“lurking”) after he or she gets enough information.

Walther and Boyd’s final factor is access. For parents, it is important and comforting to know that no matter what time of the day they post their question, someone is likely to see it and answer it—someone is always awake on the Internet. Posts were usually answered in a timely manner; some responses to the original post came in as quickly as a few minutes.