Contemporary Chinese parents' needs and questions of parenting for young children: a Web text-mining approach.

Abstract

Introduction. The current study investigated characteristics of parenting needs and questions of Mainland Chinese parents of young children. Specifically, Web text-mining technology was used to identify themes of parenting needs and questions, and parents' emotional status hidden in their question texts. Method. Total of 921,483 questions that parents posted from the top five parenting Websites in China during a 36-month study period were collected. Results. Daily care is one of the most important topics that concerned parents. Contemporary Mainland Chinese parents tend to raise questions about parental knowledge and skills. Different themes of questions could also be identified from different care-givers and different age groups of young children. Conclusions. From a parenting-oriented perspective, contemporary Chinese parents asked pesonalised questions through the Internet frequently. The considerable needs of grandparenting emerged. Programme designers and social policy makers should empower and support young children's parents with their parental knowledge, skills and emotional competence.