Fun and creative play with moms and dads: Contributions to children’s social competence

• In Event: Maternal and parental playfulness with their young children. Data from the U.S., Netherlands, and Chile

Abstract

One of the ways children develop social competence is through social play. In the context of imaginary play, children learn social skills, such as taking turns and recognizing social cues (Lillard et al., 2013). Playing with parents may provide such a context, especially when parents show high playfulness, that is, use creativity, imagination, and humor during parent–child play (Cabrera et al., 2017; Menashe-Grinberg & Atzaba-Poria, 2017). We explore whether fathers’ and mothers’ playfulness in early childhood, separately and jointly, predict better child social competence at 4.5 years.
Participants were 129 middle-class Dutch families with their first-born child. Fathers’ and mothers’ playfulness was observed using the Parental Playfulness Scale (Atzaba-Poria et al., 2017) in two free play tasks at 1, 2.5, and 4.5 years. Child social competence was assessed at 2.5 and 4.5 years using combined fathers’ and mothers’ ratings of the SCBE-30 (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996).
Regression models controlling for child gender and social competence at 2.5 years showed no significant associations between mothers’ or fathers’ playfulness at the three ages and child social competence. A more robust measure of parental playfulness, aggregated across the three ages, showed that mothers’ aggregated playfulness did not predict social competence (β = -.03, p = .723) but fathers’ aggregated playfulness predicted marginally better social competence at 4.5 years (β = .14, p = .089), controlling for early social competence and child sex. The interaction between mothers’ and fathers’ playfulness predicting social competence was non-significant (p = .890). Robust levels of fathers’ higher playfulness tend to predict improvements in social competence from toddlerhood to early school age. The finding that mothers’ playfulness did not predict social competence supports accumulating evidence that similar parenting behaviors displayed by fathers versus mothers may affect children differently, and that future studies should address both parents’ play.

Authors

• Mirjana Majdandzic, Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA)
  Presenting Author

• Natasha J Cabrera, University of Maryland - College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kelsey McKee, Office of Head Start
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Bögels, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author