Kid Screen Magazine: Echo Boomers on Parenthood
There’s an excellent article at Kidscreen.com on how Echo Boomers (Millenials) view their role as parents and relate to marketing. This is a worthy read for anyone developing a way to pitch their children or family ministry to parents.
Here are some highlights:
1) Echo Boomers value self-expression and encourage their children to do the same. They look to reveal thier personality w/ personal fashion, iphones, facebook.com, myspace.com.
– 39% of Echo Boomers agree with the statement “I follow the rules” as opposed to 57% of Xer’s.
– Echo Boomer parents challenge parenting “experts” and tend to see themselves as the source of sage advice.
2) Echo Boomers tend to live in the moment and not plan.
– Saving for retirement/college is a lower priority
– Xer parents valued edutainment toys. Echo Boomers seem to just want their toys to be fun.
3) Both Echo Boomers and Xers place a high premium of spending time with family.
4) Both groups are concerned about the volume and quality of advertising their children are exposed to.
5) Both Echo Boomers and Xers believe that with proper supervision that they can use media to reinforce their values.
2)
While the results are interesting, the study was limited to women who had become mothers before they turned 25. That appears to introduce several significant biases, most notably by excluding women who had completed four year college degrees and developed meaningful careers outside the home before reproducing.
That could explain why the moms described in the article didn’t seem similar in terms of attitudes to the moms I usually encounter in our church, in volunteering in Pony Club, and in volunteering in youth soccer.
I’d really like to see the same study performed on the demographic that this study excluded!
Geoff,
It makes sense that the part of the study that focussed on “Echo Boomer” parents dealt with people who had had kids early, as the oldest millenials or echoboomers are only currently 28 years old. It stands to reason they’d have to be young parents to qualify.
Thanks for the headsup on the article. Being in Canada, I don’t get the magazine until after all my US friends do. I’ll have to jump on over to the website and read it. It’s great to see upcoming trends from parents. This seems to echo an article I read a few years ago from a sociologist that was predicting what Millenial parents were going to be like. In many ways, it really opens up the doors for us to really capitalize on empowering, equipping and encouraging parents rather than simply telling them what to do. I am a huge proponent of “common sense” parenting. Being an Xer parent myself, it is refreshing to know that the generation of parents behind me are dumping edutainment toys… oh the bain of my existence in seeing friends go gaga over those toys… let’s just have fun!!!