[Commlist] New book: Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears About Technology Shape Children’s Lives

Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears About Technology 
Shape Children’s Lives
Sonia Livingstone & Alicia Blum-Ross (OUP 2020)

We’re delighted to announce that our book is published, and available 
with a 30% discount at www.oup.com/academic 
<http://www.oup.com/academic>(order with promo code ASFLYQ6).

*Here’s the blurb*

“Parenting for a Digital Future” asks how parents manage digital 
devices, what they should expect of them, and why these questions are so 
contested within families, among policymakers and in the media. Based on 
rigorous and in-depth fieldwork with diverse families around London, 
we argue that ‘digital parenting’ is not only about technology, salient 
as this may seem. Indeed, family practices and values around technology 
have become a crucial means by which people explore pressing dilemmas 
over how to live, what constitutes wellbeing and what ‘good life’ to 
hope for.

By inviting parents to look back to their own childhood and then forward 
to their children’s futures, we first position parenting in relation to 
the risk society before showing how digital technologies intensify 
families’ opportunities and risks in distinctive ways. We introduce 
three distinct genres for ‘digital parenting’ – embrace, balance and 
resist – and we explore how these play out in terms of screen time, 
social inequalities, geeky families, parents of children with 
disabilities, and more.

The book reveals the pincer movement of parenting in the digital age, in 
which parents are, on the one hand, more burdened with responsibilities 
given the erosion of state support and an increasingly uncertain 
financial future and yet, on the other, charged with respecting and 
encouraging the agency of their child as they negotiate ‘the democratic 
family.’

*Launch*

The US book launch will be hosted by Sesame Workshop/ Joan Ganz Cooney 
Center on Wednesday 29^th July  at 5pm UK time – register at 
http://joanganzcooneycenter.org/event/parenting-for-a-digital-future/

UK launch to follow.

*Reviews*

“The best book yet written on the dilemmas of parenting in the digital 
age, a period of constant innovation and change for adults and children 
alike. Based on in-depth studies of family life, and giving close 
attention to inequality and deprivation, this work is an indispensable 
source both for academics and the lay reader.” –*Anthony Giddens*, House 
of Lords and King’s College, Cambridge

“In this rare parents-eye view over the digital landscape, Livingstone 
and Blum-Ross cut through polarized debates and one-size-fits all 
solutions. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking a deeper 
understanding of how digital technology intersects in unexpected and 
varied ways with the everyday lives of diverse families.” –*Mimi Ito*, 
Director of the Connected Learning Lab, University of California, Irvine

“/Parenting for a Digital Future/ offers readers a rich and deeply 
nuanced picture of how children’s digital technology use reflects the 
concerns and hopes parents have for bringing up balanced and successful 
children. This book is a must read for anyone who cares about children 
and families, including scholars, policy makers, advocates, educators 
and, most importantly, parents themselves.” –*Amy Jordan*, Professor, 
School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University

*Links*

‘Parenting for a Digital Future: How hopes and fears about technology 
shape children’s lives’ is published in the US at 
https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/parenting-for-a-digital-future-9780190874704?cc=us&lang=en&;

Published in the UK on 7 Aug 
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/parenting-for-a-digital-future-9780190874704?cc=gb&lang=en&;

Available on Amazon at 
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Parenting-Digital-Future-Technology-Childrens/dp/0190874708/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Review copies available from (academic.reviews /at/ oup.com) 
<mailto:(academic.reviews /at/ oup.com)>

See also:

Interview and podcast for NPR with Sonia and Alicia at 
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/20/893020810/when-it-comes-to-screens-kids-need-a-guide-not-a-disciplinarian

Sonia’s TED Talk about the book is at 
https://www.ted.com/talks/sonia_livingstone_parenting_in_the_digital_age

Interview with Sonia in the Chronicle of Evidence-based Mentoring at 
https://www.evidencebasedmentoring.org/professor-sonia-livingstone-on-parenting-in-the-digital-age/

Implications for media literacy - FOSI Briefs the Hill webinar at 
https://www.fosi.org/events/fosi-briefs-hill-misinformation-and-importance-media-literacy/

We’re blogging about the book and related work at www.parenting.digital 
<http://www.parenting.digital/>


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