Fathers’ and Mothers’ Play: Foundations for Children’s Social-Emotional Development Across Developmental Periods

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

There is a general consensus that fathers contribute in meaningful ways to children’s social-emotional development (Cabrera et al., 2018). Nonetheless, in a recent monograph on fathering and children’s development, Volling and Cabrera (2019) identified core issues for advancing parenting research beyond a mother-centric conceptualization, including the need for new observational coding systems to capture the specificity of father-child relationships across development and the need to compare the same parenting behaviors in both parents. This symposium addresses these issues and contributes to the advancement of fathering research and to mothering research more broadly.
The three presentations share a goal of assessing parenting behaviors in a play context as a way to transcend traditional mother-centric assessments of parenting that are based on nurturance and care. All presentations present novels coding systems capturing parenting play behaviors from infancy to middle childhood, and compare play behaviors across both parents.
The first presentation examines challenging parenting behaviors in a no-toy play interaction with their 9-month infant in a sample of low-income, ethnically diverse families. The second presentation validates the Risky Interaction Support and Challenge Scales with toddlers, an innovative measure that is based on fathers’ activation role in play interactions with their child. The third presentation examines the longitudinal stability of fathers’ and mothers’ parenting behaviors in a play setting from the preschool years to middle childhood. Our discussant will conclude this session by discussing how these novel coding systems are critical to understand the different ways that parents foster their children’s positive development.

Sub Unit

• Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Chair

• Audrey-Ann Deneault, University of Calgary (U of C)

Discussant

• Catherine S Tamis-Lemonda, New York University

Individual Presentations

• Challenging Parenting Behaviors in Diverse Fathers and Mothers: Determinants and Associations with Infants' Social Skills - Presenting Author: Audrey-Ann Deneault, University of Calgary (U of C); Non-Presenting Author: Rachel Alina Ghosh, University of Maryland - College Park; Non-Presenting Author: Natasha J Cabrera, University of Maryland - College Park; Non-Presenting Author: Ann-Sophie Tölle, University of Maryland, College Park; Non-Presenting Author: Jenny Seethaler, Ruhr-Universität Bochum; Non-Presenting Author: Mirjana Majdandzic, Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA)

• Mothers’ and Fathers’ Challenging Behavior Measured Using a New Coding System Differentially Predicts Social-Emotional Development - Presenting Author: Eric L. Olofson, Wabash College; Non-Presenting Author: Sarah Jane Schoppe-Sullivan, Ohio State University

• Stability of father- and mother-child synchrony in a playful setting from preschool to middle childhood - Presenting Author: Jean-Francois Bureau, University of Ottawa; Non-Presenting Author: Philip Trepiak, University of Ottawa; Non-Presenting Author: Katia Boulerice, University of Ottawa; Non-Presenting Author: Audrey-Ann Deneault, University of Calgary (U of C)