Poster #157 - Predictors of Paternal Involvement in Play Activities During Infancy: a Multifactorial Approach

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Background: An increasing number of studies suggest that paternal involvement in play activities promotes child social and cognitive development (Jia, Kotila, & Schoppe-Sullivan, 2012 ; Bronte-Tinkew, Carrano, Horowitz, & Kinukawa, 2008). Fostering such involvement with appropriate intervention programs and social policies could promote child development and well-being. A better understanding of the factors that encourage or hinder fathers’ involvement in play activities is however required to develop effective policies and intervention programs. Most of the studies that have investigated the predictors of father involvement have focused on engagement in basic child care activities such as feeding, bathing, or diapering the child. Moreover, most of them used self-reported questionnaires measuring frequency of fathers’ participation in parental activities without taking into account the actual amount of time fathers spend interacting or playing with their infants. Thus, far less is known about the predictors of fathers’ temporal involvement in play (Brown, McBride, Bost, & Shin, 2011).

Aims and methods: Using a multifactorial approach, the aim of the present study was to investigate the predictors of paternal temporal involvement in play activities as measured by a time-diary structured interview protocol (McBride et Mills, 1990). This study involved 94 fathers of 6-month-old infants. For each seven days of a typical week, fathers were asked to describe their activity in detail (30 minutes intervals) from the time they woke up to the time they went to sleep. Fathers were encouraged by the interviewer to elaborate on the exact length and nature of activities using clarification questions and prompts. Six determinants of parenting behaviors were examined in relation with paternal involvement in play activities: infant gender, parenting alliance (Abidin & Brunner, 1995), fathers’ parenting self-efficacy (Turcotte, Dubeau, Bolté & Paquette, 2001), mental health (Derogatis, 1983), parenting-related distress and perception of infant difficultness (Abidin, 1995).

Results: Correlations and regression analyses were performed to test the associations between the six determinants and paternal temporal involvement in play. The results of the correlations are presented in Table 1. Fathers’ perception of infant difficultness was found to be the only determinant significantly associated with the amount of time spent by fathers in play (r = -.29, p < .01). As shown in Table 2, the six determinants explained 10% of the variance in father temporal involvement in playful activities, but perceived infant difficultness was the sole significant predictor (β = -.27, p < .05).

Discussion and conclusion: The results suggest that perceiving the infant as difficult can hinder fathers’ temporal involvement in play during infancy, while child gender, paternal mental health, parenting alliance, distress and self-efficacy doesn’t seem to have an effect on such involvement. These results highlight that infants’ perceived temperament is of special importance to fathers’ temporal involvement in play. Thus, intervention programs aiming to promote such involvement should take into account infant temperament.

Authors

• Alexane Baribeau-Lambert, Laval University
  Presenting Author

• Catherine Levesque, Laval University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Célia Matte-Gagné, Laval University
  Non-Presenting Author