Perceived familial influence and its role in creating gendered leisure reading practices among children

This research, being a fragment of a larger study, was conducted in Singapore involving 10-11-year-old participants from five primary schools. The 567 participants responded to a close-ended questionnaire and 33 of them from the sample, participated in focus group discussion (FGD) sessions. A mixed-method design was used to focus on the following issue: in what ways do family members (namely, parents and siblings) influence participants in their leisure reading practices as perceived by participants?

Results showed that familial influence can be placed on a cline. According to some participants, when familial influence had been traditional, they tended to be imbued with similar mind-set while engaging in leisure reading practices. These participants opined that their family members encouraged them to read leisure reading materials linked with their gender. Another group of participants, however, claimed that their leisure reading practices were egalitarian as family members encouraged them to read all types of materials. Yet, there were participants who voiced that their familial influence was hybrid - one family member encouraged them to read materials linked with their gender while another family member encouraged them to read widely - that is, not being fixated to reading materials meant for any gender.

Overall, findings from the research suggested children from households with egalitarian familial influence, crossed all boundaries in reading and enjoyed a diversity of reading materials in English as compared to participants from households with traditional or hybrid familial influence. In addition, a key finding showed that children from households with traditional familial influence demonstrated inhibitions and were reluctant to trespass boundaries in reading. "Trained" by their family, they read and enjoyed texts in English, but their reading diet was rather limited because of the influence they received.