Dark climates and media use in the family: The associations among child temperament, maternal mental well-being, and the frequency of mothers' use of television viewing to soothe their children

Family life can be filled with darkness, ranging from light and mild tints of darkness to very intense shades of darkness (Fitness & Duffield, 2004; Olson, Baiocchi-Wagner, Wilson-Kratzer, & Symonds 2012). Within some families, darkness in the family impacts familial functioning and affects the dyadic interactions in a family (Olson et al., 2012). With respect to parent-child relationships, dark issues can affect processes at the level of parent-child pairs and may result in negative forms of parenting (Lee, Zhou, Eisenberg, & Wang, 2013; Olson et al., 2012). Therefore, the present chapter will explore the extent to which dark individual traits on behalf of the child and the parent may result in parenting strategies that promote the use of television for children.