Parent–child play and parent–child relationship: Are fathers special?

Given the substantial heterogeneity across studies on parent-child play, we comparatively explored father-child and mother-child play while controlling for effects of the play settings in two diverse situations. We pursued three open questions: (a) how play behaviors inherently differ between the parents, and (b) relate to play quality, and (c) what does this mean for the parent-child relationship? Father-child and mother-child play was separately instructed and videotaped in 80 two-parent families with children aged 18-58 months (44 boys). We offered a physical and a cognitive game, and analyzed each parent-child dyad after rating 10 characteristic parental play behaviors (Encouraging, Surprising, Teasing, Explaining, Confirming, Instructing, Restricting, Lampooning, Sound-Imitating, and Caressing) and three subscales of the Play Quality scale (Piskernik & Ruiz, 2018). External observers also assessed father- and mother-child relationships with the Attachment-Q Sort (Waters, 1995). Results suggest that types of game, rather than parent gender, predicted parental play behaviors. Parents differed in behaviors typical for involving children mentally (e.g., parents explained, confirmed, and surprised) or are popular for stimulating children physically (e.g., parents frequently encouraged, limited restrictions, and imitated sounds). High levels of encouraging and confirming behaviors were related to high quality across games with frequent bouts of teasing. During cognitive games, fathers obtained lower quality than mothers, yet both showed the same quality levels in physical games, where fathers, however, were less instructive and more restrictive while also caressing. High play quality in both games was not associated with mother-child but linked to father-child attachment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).