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Previous research has shown that children’s ability to understand mental states is related to their consumer development, yet it is unknown how parents can aid in this process. One possible way that parents may help is using mental state communication (i.e. communication that focuses on beliefs/intention to explain behavior by others). This study aims to examine whether this kind of communication is linked to children’s purchase requests through two potential mediators – active mediation and child socio-cognitive skills (i.e. Theory of Mind).

This study used a survey of 420 American mothers with children between the ages of 3 and 7. Respondents were given 12 scenarios describing typical parent–child interactions focused on discussing mental states and were asked how they would respond. Then, respondents were asked about demographic information, parenting style, mediation style, child socio-cognitive skills and child purchase requests.

Results showed both a direct and indirect negative association between parents’ mental state communication and children’s purchase requests via active advertising mediation. Contrary to expectations, active mediation was negatively associated with mental state communication and positively linked to child purchase requests. Children’s socio-cognitive skills were not associated with either parents’ mental state communication or children’s purchase requests.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first known study that has examined mental state communication of parents as a potential predictor in shaping children’s purchase requests and found that it was negatively associated with it.

This study aims to explore how American parents’ familiarity and knowledge of mobile advertising are linked to mediational tactics across three mobile media devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones). This study further tests whether advertising knowledge, familiarity and parental media mediation are associated with children’s consumer behavior.

The approach adopted was a cross-sectional survey of 500 American parents with at least one child between the ages of 5 to 14 who were recruited via Qualtrics. Parents were asked about their familiarity with mobile/digital advertising and their knowledge of such material. They were also asked how they mediated their children’s media experience on the three mobile devices, how often their children asked for consumer goods and how often they argued with their children over the purchase of consumer goods.

Results showed differences regarding how parents’ advertising knowledge and familiarity were linked to their mediational practices and their child’s consumer behavior. Specifically, advertising familiarity was associated with increased mediation across devices and increased purchase requests/conflict. Conversely, advertising knowledge was only associated with couse/viewing mediation, but this relationship was negative; moreover, knowledge was negatively associated with children’s consumer behavior.

The results of this study offer insights into how knowledge and familiarity with mobile advertising shape parents’ mediational approaches to children. This study provides crucial data linking mediational approaches with children’s consumer behavior.

This study aims to examine what parents from across the USA know about online advertising/marketing tactics directed at children, their familiarity with these tactics and what they believe about the appropriateness of using these promotional methods to target children.

The online survey company Qualtrics was used to collect data from 500 parents in the USA. Parents had to have at least one child between the ages of 5 and 14 to participate. To ensure socio-economic diversity, half of the participants had an associate degree or more of schooling while the other half of participants had some college or less. Participants were given vignettes describing 11 different online advertising/marketing tactics and were asked how familiar they were with each tactic, whether they could identify the tactic by name, at what age they believed their child could understand the promotional intent of the tactic and the age that they thought it was ethical to use this tactic with children.

The results revealed that parents were only moderately familiar with many of these advertising/marketing tactics and had difficulty identifying most of them by name. In addition, parents reported that, on average, most 11-year-old children would understand the purpose of these marketing approaches and that it was ethical to target children with them.

The results of this exploratory study offer researchers some key insights into how American parents perceive online advertising that targets children.

Using gender schema theory, this study aims to explore how children’s graphic t-shirts from clothing retailers in the USA differed on gendered themes for graphic t-shirts targeting boys or girls, in addition to differences for shirts that were higher in cost.

This content analysis of children’s t-shirts included 866 child-targeted shirts taken from the online retail portals from 11 clothing retailers in the USA. Shirts were coded for gendered themes on the front torso part of the shirt and included traditional boy themes (e.g. aggression, instrumentality) and girl themes (e.g. compassion, passivity). In addition, the retail prices for each shirt were recorded at the time of data collection.

The results demonstrated that children’s graphic t-shirts starkly differentiate between femininity and masculinity based on their target. Boys’ shirts were significantly more likely to feature active themes, whereas girls’ shirts were more likely to focus on social belonging and interpersonal connection. Boys’ shirts were also more likely to display themes linked to dominance/aggression but not compassion. Girls’ shirts were more likely to tout both shyness and attention seeking. Finally, results generally showed that higher priced t-shirts were less likely to feature gender stereotypes than lower-priced t-shirts.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first known study that has looked at the marketing of children’s clothes in retail environments with a specific focus on gender and gender stereotyping.

This paper aims to revise an earlier version of a measure used to assess parent–child consumer-based communication to better capture how parents talk with their children about consumer matters.

Three separate studies were used to revise the measure. The first tested the original measure with parents and children in a supermarket to determine its predictive validity. The second utilized focus groups with parents to refine the measure. The final study sampled 503 parents via MTurk to test the performance of the revised measure regarding reliability and validity.

The first study found that the original scale did not perform well as it relates to predicting child consumer behavior. The second study used parents to describe in their own words how they talk to their own children about consumer issues. Using these insights, the final study used the redesigned scale and identified four dimensions to the consumer-related family communication patterns instrument: collaborative communication, control communication, product value and commercial truth. These four dimensions had good reliability, convergent validity and predictive validity.

With an updated measure of parent–child consumer-based communication that more closely matches how parents talk to their children about consumer issues, this measure can help researchers understand how children are socialized as consumers.

This study offers researchers a reliable and valid measure of parent–child consumer-based communication that can help inform future studies on this important topic.

This paper aims to explore how children’s developing ability to effectively regulate their emotions influences their consumer behavior .

Working with 80 children and one of their parents, this study used direct observations of child behavior in a task where they needed to regulate their emotions and a survey of parents about their child’s emotional development and consumer behavior. The research used quantitative methods to test whether children’s emotion regulation predicted parent reported consumer behavior (e.g. purchase requests, parent–child purchase related conflict) via multiple regression analyses.

After controlling for children’s age and linguistic competence, the study found that children’s ability to control positively valenced emotions predicted consumer behavior. Specifically, children who had more difficulty suppressing joy/happiness were more likely to ask their parents for consumer goods and were more likely to argue with parents about these purchases.

Content analyses of commercials targeting children have shown that many of the persuasive appeals used by advertisers are emotionally charged and often feature marketing characters that children find affectively pleasing. These findings suggest that these types of marketing appeals may overwhelm younger children which can lead to conflict with parents. Consequently, marketers and policy makers may want to re-examine the use of such tactics with younger consumers.

While the potential link between children’s emotional development and consumer behavior has been suggested in theoretical work, this is the first known study to empirically test this theorized relationship.

After summarizing what has been learned so far, the purpose of this review is to suggest several promising avenues for future research on work-to-family enrichment (WFE) and family-to-work enrichment (FWE).

This is a literature review. After reviewing the existing research and searching for gaps in the literature, new areas of research will be proposed to fill these gaps.

While much has been learned about the antecedents and consequences of work–family enrichment in both directions, WFE and FWE, much remains to be learned.

Three important outcomes – job performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior – need to be studied regarding WFE and FWE. Although supervisor support has been studied, the field needs to incorporate leadership theories and models to understand this phenomenon. Additional predictors of work outcomes – including emotional intelligence, leadership, emotional labor, social support, gender, and cross-cultural variables – need to be examined. Experience sampling methods and advanced research methodologies should also be used.

Although prior research has demonstrated the important effects of WFE and FWE, the practical effects on organizations in terms of job performance still need to be investigated.

The literature review conclusively demonstrates that WFE and FWE are both related to job satisfaction and family satisfaction.

This is the first review to summarize the existing meta-analytical research in this area and to propose the particular avenues of research advocated in this article.

Based on the social exchange theory, the paper aims to explore the effects of work–life support (WLS) practices on subjective well-being through work engagement and job satisfaction.

Data of 332 bank employees were collected in three waves and analyzed using AMOS and PROCESS macro.

The study revealed that WLS practices influenced employees' subjective well-being both directly and indirectly. The study's results further supported the serial mediation of the indirect effect through work engagement and job satisfaction.

Organizational WLS practices are supposed to play an effective role in helping employees increase subjective well-being. Organizations should attach importance to implementing WLS practices to ensure that employees are engaged and satisfied. Furthermore, organizations should undertake and communicate favorable WLS practices to stimulate employees' work and non-work well-being.

The study is the first that examines the impact of WLS practices on employees' subjective well-being. Furthermore, the study offers novel insights regarding the dual mediation effect of work engagement and job satisfaction in the relationship between WLS practices and subjective well-being.

Women leaders operate within multiple roles, managing both work and nonwork obligations. Exploring work-life balance constructs, this study examined role integration, social support sources, and work-family conflict to determine their influence on women leaders. Findings suggested that women leaders felt the benefit of a variety of social support services, but especially from sources external to the organization. Women leaders were diverse in role integration strategies, with respondents largely divided between blurring and segregating their work and nonwork roles. Time-based work-family conflict was slightly more apparent than strain-based conflict. Women leaders also indicated that their work interfered with their family more than their family interfered with their work. Findings provide valuable insights as to how women view work-life balance within their roles as leaders.

This study investigates work and non-work antecedents for the work–life balance (WLB) development of remote employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. Longitudinal data (N = 1,146, T1; N = 737, T2) was collected in May–June 2020 and December 2020 in one multinational company (MNC) in Finland. In data analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM) with a cross-lagged panel model was utilized. The results revealed that during the pandemic, WLB slightly decreased. The quantitative job demands increased and predicted a decreased WLB at T2. Job autonomy decreased but did not have an effect on WLB development or buffer the negative effect of quantitative job demands on WLB. Time saved from commuting was positively related to WLB development, but the number of children living at home and the age of the youngest child had no statistically significant link to WLB development over time (similar finding for men and women). Although care responsibilities from the gender perspective is not the focus of our study, the additional analysis show that WLB at T1 was more challenging for women the more children they had, or the younger the youngest child was. For men, children did not make a difference for their WLB at T1. This finding indicates that WLB has been more challenging for mothers compared to fathers already when our first data had been collected, and the continuance of the pandemic did not change the situation in any direction. This research contributes to the knowledge about work and non-work related demands and resources as antecedents for WLB development during the pandemic. As a practical implication during the pandemic, the authors suggest that employers should follow development for employees’ WLB as a measure of well-being in remote work. In addition, the workload of remote employees should be followed, and time saved from commuting should be preserved as employees’ non-work time and protected from work-related tasks.