Parenting Journal · Volume 2 · Issue 5 · Licensed source edition
A Process Framework of Family AI Use in Early Education and Care
Originally published 2026-06-16 · Family Process
Wiley · DOI 10.1111/famp.70174 ↗
AI / system type
Mixed consumer AI and LLM use; qualitative family-practice study
Direct parenting evidenceDirectly addresses parents or caregiving, including parent studies, syntheses and audits of parenting advice.
The AI connection
The study examines home use of AI learning applications and conversational systems, including LLM-based parenting advice.
Why this reading matters
Offers direct family evidence about making deliberate AI choices while showing that confident use can coexist with little discussion of hallucinations.
Editorial reading guide · Trust
What family values should guide when we ask AI for help?
Parents linked their beliefs about AI to its intended household functions and to rules for children’s use. Their accounts combined confidence in useful answers with boundaries around emotional care, privacy, and commercial pressure.
Study context
Sixteen weekly AI-using parents from nine Chinese cities were interviewed; fourteen were mothers and all held bachelor’s or master’s degrees.
Age / stage: Nursery and kindergarten children; exact ages not reported
Read with three questions
- How did parents connect beliefs, intended uses, and supervision?
- What did parents overlook about factual reliability despite setting privacy boundaries?
- How might children or families with less access describe these decisions differently?
Keep the limits in view
The purposive, educated urban sample already used AI weekly. Interviews captured parents’ interpretations, without children’s accounts or tests of the proposed process framework.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Ying Zhang; Qilong Zhang; Ke Jiang; Ying Li; Qiuzhi Xie (2026). A Process Framework of Family AI Use in Early Education and Care Family Process. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.70174
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-04. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.