Parental perceptions of play: the influences of parent gender, gender role attitudes, and parenting styles on parent attitudes toward child play

Abstract

The literature overwhelmingly demonstrates that play supports healthy social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development. Efforts to understand parents' support of child play seek to identify parent attitudes toward play, ways in which parents facilitate play for their children, and how they participate in play. Previous findings indicate parent valuation of play is an important factor for childhood play time and finds differences between mothers and fathers in parent-child play. While much research has been done to understand how mothers and fathers play with their sons and daughters, few studies have investigated what factors influence parent valuation of play or facilitate certain types of play. This study used a moderated mediation model to explore how parental attitudes about gender roles influence perceptions of play through parenting style and how this effect may be different for fathers and mothers. Analyses were also performed to understand the relationships between parent attitudes and parent play behaviors. The findings suggested egalitarian gender role attitudes predicted a higher valuation of play and more permissive mindsets toward cross-gender play for both mothers and fathers. Conversely, traditional gender role attitudes were predictive of less permissive mindsets toward cross-gender play for both mothers and fathers. A moderated mediation was found for fathers with traditional gender role attitudes and a permissive or authoritarian parenting style. Fathers with traditional gender role attitudes and a permissive parenting style were less likely to value play for child development. Fathers with traditional attitudes and an authoritarian parenting style had less permissive mindsets toward cross-gender play. Additionally for both mothers and fathers, authoritative parenting was correlated with increased parent play behaviors, while authoritarian parenting was correlated with decreased parent play behaviors. These findings support previous literature in that parent gender and gender role attitudes do appear to influence parent attitudes toward play. They also contribute to our understanding of parent gender differences and the way that parenting style influence this relationship. In addition, parenting style was found to be a facilitator of parent-child play. These findings contribute to an understanding of what kind of parents value play and can be used to inform family psychotherapy and parent education about play.