Parental socialization and the consumption of domestic films, books and music

Abstract

By innovatively combining insights from research on cultural consumption, socialization and nationalism, this study is one of the first empirical studies to shed more light on role of parental socialization in domestic and foreign cultural consumption of films, books and music. Similar to previous studies on parental socialization of highbrow and lowbrow cultural consumption, parents’ cultural socialization when respondents were in their formative years (i.e. parental domestic cultural consumption) is relevant for respondents’ domestic and foreign cultural consumption later in life. Parents’ national behaviour during their children’s formative years is related to the respondents’ positive nationalist attitudes, which, in turn, is associated with respondents’ domestic film and music consumption. Parental socialization plays a less important role in domestic book consumption, indicating that in less diverse cultural markets, other socialization influences (such as school) might be playing a role as well. Adding to the debate on the influence of parental socialization over the life course, we found indications that the effects of parental socialization on domestic consumption were weaker for older compared to younger people. This suggests the importance of parental socialization and the varying ways in which it is associated with domestic cultural consumption.