The Cultivation of Parent and Child Materialism: A Parent–Child Dyadic Study

Jul 16, 2026

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Examines two pathways linking parental influence to children’s materialism: parent cultivation (parents transmit their own materialism, partly shaped by parents’ cultivation) versus child cultivation (parents’ television viewing affects children’s television viewing, which predicts children’s materialism). Two studies of U.S. parent–child dyads (ages 14–17) support the parent cultivation pathway, with parent TV viewing relating to child materialism via parent materialism.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages25

Reading Time1 h 3 min

AccessFree to download

Human Communication Research 0360-3989 ORIGINAL RESEARCH The Cultivation of Parent and Child Materialism: A Parent–Child Dyadic Study Cristel A. Russell1 & L. J. Shrum 2 1 Department of Marketing, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, 90263, USA 2 Department of Marketing, HEC Paris, Jouy-en-Josas, 78351, France Research has shown that television viewing cultivates a materialistic worldview in children. However, other socialization factors may also inﬂuence children’s materialism. The current research tests two socialization pathways of parental inﬂuence: (a) an indirect path in which parents pass on their own materialism to their children, and the parent’s materialism is at least partly the result of a parent cultivation effect (parent cultivation); (b) an indirect path in which parents pass on their television viewing behavior to their children, which in turn positively predicts the children’s level of materialism (child cultivation). The results of two studies (initial study plus direct replication, N ¼ 818) of U.S. parent–child dyads with 14- to 17-year-old children support the ﬁrst path but not the second: The relation between parent TV viewing and child materialism is mediated through parent materialism. Child TV viewing is positively correlated with child materialism, but is nonsigniﬁcant when parent materialism is controlled. Keywords: Cultivation, Materialism, Parent–Child Dyad, Television, Children, Socialization doi:10.1093/hcr/hqab004 Increases in children’s materialism, and the importance they place on acquisitionsand possessions, have been a perennial concern (Kasser, 2002; Nairn, Ormrod, & Bottomley, 2007; Opree, Petrova, & Rozendaal, 2020) . These concerns are understandable given the consistent finding that materialism has numerous negative consequences, with little apparent upside (Chaplin et al., 2019; Richins, 2017; Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017) . Although there are many reasonable culprits for the development of materialism in children, one of the most frequently mentioned is exposure to media, in particular television. Despite seemingly annual declarations that television viewing is dead (or will die soon), the level of viewing among Americans has remained remarkably invariant over the last 10 years (Nielsen, 2020; Watson 2020b), and the COVID-19 pandemic has increased viewing even more, particularly for children and adolescents (Watson, 2020a) . Moreover, parents are Corresponding author: Cristel A. Russell; e-mail: [cristelrussell@fulbrightmail.org](cristelrussell@fulbrightmail.org) [284](284 Human Communication Research 47)[ Human Communication Research](284 Human Communication Research 47)[ 47](284 Human Communication Research 47) ([2021](2021)) [284](284)–[308](308) VC The Author(s) 2021 . Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [journals.permissions@oup.com](journals.permissions@oup.com) The Cult

Jul 16, 2026

Uploaded by Aurelia