Parent-infant play during the first year of life

doi:10.1016/S0163-6383(84)80023-5

Infant Behavior and Development

Volume 7, Issue 1, January–March 1984, Pages 65-75

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-6383(84)80023-5 Get rights and content

Seven-, 10-, and 13-month-old infants were videotaped in their homes playing with either their father or their mother. As in previous research, more fathers used rough physical play with their infants than did mothers. For the most part, however, fathers and mothers exhibited the same developmental changes in their play. The proportion of parents using two stimulation forms of play (i.e., gentle and rough physical) was inversely related to increasing infant age. In contrast, more parents used two forms of play affording infant contribution of coordinated schemes (i.e., role games and pretend play) with 13-month-olds than with 7-month-olds. Similarly, parents of older infants used coordinated object play more frequently than did parents of younger infants. Mothers decreased use of stimulation with objects and increased use of reading, while fathers used these behaviors infrequently, regardless of infant age.

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Cited by (58)

Early parent–infant interaction through the lens of the father. A retrospective look at the research of the last decades
2023, Neuropsychiatrie de l'Enfance et de l'Adolescence
Après des années de recherches centrées sur la dyade mère–bébé, la littérature s’est progressivement intéressée aux interactions père-bébé. Cette revue de littérature vise à proposer une synthèse des connaissances sur la dyade père–bébé. Ainsi, une première partie présente un ensemble de travaux qui ont exploré les comportements paternels au sein de la dyade père–bébé bien souvent par comparaison aux comportements maternels observés au sein de la dyade mère–bébé. Dans la seconde partie, l’article explore l’échange précoce père-bébé comme un sous-système du système familial, une approche triadique qui permet une comparaison directe des deux parents et donne accès à différentes configurations dyadiques. Une troisième partie présente des études plus contemporaines, menées notamment dès la période néonatale, avec un regard pour les situations de vulnérabilité qui restent moins investies lorsqu’il s’agit du père que lorsqu’il s’agit de la mère. Enfin, nous terminons l’article sur une réflexion autour du père, un partenaire du bébé encore sous-étudié, dans un contexte sociétal pourtant en évolution quant à la place qui lui est faite.
After many years of research focused on the mother-infant dyad, the literature has gradually turned its attention to father-infant interactions. This literature review aims to provide a synthesis of knowledge on the father-infant dyad. Thus, the first part summarizes a set of works that have explored paternal behaviour within the father-baby dyad in comparison with maternal behaviour observed within the mother-baby dyad. In the second part, the article explores the early father-baby exchange as a subsystem of the family system, a triadic approach which allows a direct comparison of the two parents and gives access to different dyadic configurations. A third part presents more contemporary studies, carried out in particular from the neonatal period, with a look at the situations of vulnerability which remain less invested when it comes to the father than when it comes to the mother. Finally, we end the article with a reflection on the father, a partner of the baby who is still understudied, in a societal context that is nonetheless evolving in terms of the place he is given.
Father-child play: A systematic review of its frequency, characteristics and potential impact on children's development
2020, Developmental Review
Citation Excerpt :
At the earliest stage of infancy, parent–child play may involve playful facial expressions, physical stimulation or the singing of songs and rhymes. Even within the first year of life, parents have been observed engaging in physical play, role-playing games, pretend play and object play with their infants (Crawley & Sherrod, 1984; Power, 1985). While early parent-infant play may have benefits for bonding and relationships (Milteer, Ginsburg & Mulligan, 2012), it has also been shown to have important consequences for children’s cognitive skills.
Parent-child play interactions in the first years of life are linked to more positive cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes for children. The vast majority of previous research has focussed on mother-infant play interactions, but the potential positive role of fathers’ early involvement in children’s lives is being increasingly recognised, with higher levels of caregiving by fathers in many countries. To characterise the nature and potential impact of father-child play we undertook a systematic review of the published literature in psychological and educational databases up until 2018. We focussed on studies addressing the frequency and characteristics of fathers’ play with children (aged 0–3 years), and the potential impact on children’s development. We screened 436 articles, yielding 78 papers addressing the questions of interest. There are 3 key findings. First, fathers spend a significant proportion of their time with their children engaging in playful interactions, often in the form of physical play such as rough and tumble. Second, whilst findings are mixed, on balance the evidence suggests that fathers’ play frequency increases from infancy to preschool age with a subsequent decline in play as children reach early- middle childhood. Third, studies investigating links between fathers’ play and child outcomes suggest that fathers’ play in the early years can positively contribute to children’s social, emotional and cognitive outcomes. This potential for substantial benefit for children provides a clear imperative for policy makers and practitioners to facilitate and support fathers, as well as mothers, in developing more positive and playful interactions with their infants.
The effect of play task on maternal touch patterns when interacting with their 12 months-old infants: An exploratory study
2020, Infant Behavior and Development
Citation Excerpt :
At this stage, infants develop the ability to engage in joint attention during triadic interactions that involves them, an object, and another partner (Bertenthal & Boyer, 2015). Parents also follow infant development and shifting in this period from the predominant use of tactile stimulation during play (e.g. tickling and rough-and-tumble) to other forms of play, such as object-mediated dyadic play (Crawley & Sherrod, 1984). The increase in the parent-infant play repertoire (Williams, 2003) and the modulation of social touch by age (Crawley & Sherrod, 1984) suggests that parents adjust tactile behavior to a specific play task.
Multiple studies have demonstrated the critical role of touch in human development and the impact of mother’s tactile input for an infant’s well-being. However, the literature lacks a detailed description of maternal touch behavior during play tasks. Our study examined maternal touch patterns during mother-infant interactions. We analyzed the touch behavior of 41 mothers while they interacted with their 12-month-old infants, in a structured social interaction, composed of three tasks: (1) free play with toys, (2) free play without toys, and (3) object play with a challenging toy. Every touch performed by the mother was segmented and categorized using the Ordinalized Mother Touch Scale (OMTS Category). In a 3 (Play Task) x 8 (OMTS Category) ANOVA, all effects were significant. We found that, in the free play without toys task, mother’s use of touch is highly frequent (M = 71 %), when compared to object-oriented tasks. Mothers also adjusted to object-oriented task difficulty: they touched almost twice as much in the challenging play task as in the free play with toys (M = 26 % vs. M = 14 %). In addition, the different play tasks influenced the proportion of time mothers used particular categories of touch. In summary, our study found that mothers’ touch behavior depends on the play task demands (non-object oriented vs. object oriented) changing in terms of frequency but also in the mother’s use of different categories of touch.
Depression and playfulness in fathers and young infants: A matched design comparison study
2018, Journal of Affective Disorders
Citation Excerpt :
The prediction that depressed fathers would engage in less physical play compared to non-depressed fathers was not supported. These findings stand in contrast to previous studies of fathers and their infants in play across the first year of life (Clarke-Stewart, 1978; Crawley and Sherrod, 1984; Lamb, 1977; Yogman, 1981). We suspect that, at three months, face to face communication in fathers may focus on tactile behaviours and limb movement games rather than active gross-motor stimulation.
Depression in fathers in the postnatal period is associated with an increased risk of some adverse child developmental outcomes. One possible mechanism for the familial transmission of risk is through the negative effects of depression on parenting and the parent-child relationship. So far, evidence indicates that depressed fathers tend to be more withdrawn in their early interactions. However, the interaction dimensions studied to date may not be able to detect and accurately classify unique features of father-infant play – including physically stimulating and highly rousing episodes of play. Hence, in this matched design comparison study, we set out to examine, for the first time, links between diagnosed paternal depression in the postnatal period and playfulness in father-infant interactions.
Fathers and their infants were assessed when the infants were 3 months old. Paternal depression was diagnosed using a structured psychiatric interview. Currently depressed (n = 19) and non-depressed (n = 19) fathers were individually matched on age and education. Fathers were filmed playing with their children. Four dimensions were coded for paternal playfulness during free-play: physicality, playful excitation, tactile stimulation and active engagement.
Depressed fathers, compared to non-depressed fathers, engaged in fewer episodes of playful excitation (mean scores: 0.71 vs.2.53, p = 0.005), less gentle touch (mean time: 38.57 vs. 53.37, p = 0.015) and less active engagement (mean scores: 2.29 vs 3.24, p = 0.044). When controlling for infant fretfulness, the findings remained largely unchanged.
The sample size was small and the sample was limited to mostly white, well-educated fathers.
Playful paternal behaviours as early as 3 months differ between fathers with and without depression. These changes may help in understanding children’s risk in relation to paternal psychopathology and could be a target for future family interventions.
Approaching the biology of human parental attachment: Brain imaging, oxytocin and coordinated assessments of mothers and fathers
2014, Brain Research
Citation Excerpt :
In contrast, during play with fathers, a pattern of interactive arousal was identified that contained several quick peaks of high positive emotionality, including joint laughter and open exuberance. Behavioral data with fathers have demonstrated important differences in typical father vs. mother–child interactions beginning in infancy (Crawley and Sherrod, 1984; Feldman, 2003). Fathers, for example, tend to exhibit increased physical interactions with their young children, often characterized as “rough and tumble” play (Carson et al., 1993).
Brain networks that govern parental response to infant signals have been studied with imaging techniques over the last 15 years. The complex interaction of thoughts and behaviors required for sensitive parenting enables the formation of each individual׳s first social bonds and critically shapes development. This review concentrates on magnetic resonance imaging experiments which directly examine the brain systems involved in parental responses to infant cues. First, we introduce themes in the literature on parental brain circuits studied to date. Next, we present a thorough chronological review of state-of-the-art fMRI studies that probe the parental brain with a range of baby audio and visual stimuli. We also highlight the putative role of oxytocin and effects of psychopathology, as well as the most recent work on the paternal brain. Taken together, a new model emerges in which we propose that cortico-limbic networks interact to support parental brain responses to infants. These include circuitry for arousal/salience/motivation/reward, reflexive/instrumental caring, emotion response/regulation and integrative/complex cognitive processing. Maternal sensitivity and the quality of caregiving behavior are likely determined by the responsiveness of these circuits during early parent-infant experiences. The function of these circuits is modifiable by current and early-life experiences, hormonal and other factors. Severe deviation from the range of normal function in these systems is particularly associated with (maternal) mental illnesses – commonly, depression and anxiety, but also schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Finally, we discuss the limits and extent to which brain imaging may broaden our understanding of the parental brain given our current model. Developments in the understanding of the parental brain may have profound implications for long-term outcomes in families across risk, resilience and possible interventions.
This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Oxytocin and Social Behav.
Coordination of gaze, facial expressions and vocalizations of early infant communication with mother and father
2012, Infant Behavior and Development
Citation Excerpt :
To summarize, infants show more positive emotions (i.e. positive facial expressions or smiles) during the interaction with the mother as compared to the interaction with the father. This result seems to be independent of the level of sensitivity of the parents (Braungart-Rieker et al., 1998; Crawley & Sherrod, 1984; Notaro & Volling, 1999), and probably determined by the more socially oriented style of mothers (Feldman, 2003; Forbes et al., 2004). As previously mentioned, in efficient emotional communication, vocalizations should be temporally coordinated with facial expressions and with gaze at the interlocutor.
Gaze direction, expressive behaviors and vocalizations are infants’ first form of emotional communication. The present study examined the emotional configurations of these three behaviors during face-to-face situations and the effect of infants’ and parents’ gender. We observed 34 boys and 32 girls (mean age of 18 weeks) during the normal face-to-face interaction with their mother and with their father. Three main behaviors and their temporal co-occurrence were observed: gaze direction at the partner as an indication of infants’ attention, positive and negative facial expressions as emotional communication, and vocalizations as first forms of utterances. Pairwise, infants’ production of vocalizations, positive facial expressions and gaze were strongly coordinated with each. In addition, the majority of vocalizations produced during positive facial expressions coincided with gaze at the parent. Results on the effect of gender showed that infants (both boys and girls) produced coordinated patterns of positive facial expressions and gaze more often during the interaction with the mother as compared to the interaction with the father. Results contribute to the research on infants’ early expression of emotions and gender differences.

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^*: This study was supported in part by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant HD-00973 to the Institute on Mental Retardation and Intellectual Development of the John F. Kennedy Center for Research on Education and Human Development, George Peabody College for Teachers of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN.

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Parent-infant play during the first year of life*

Infant Behavior and Development

Peek-a-boo and the learning of rule structures

And daddy makes three: The father's impact on mother and young child

Child Development

Developmental changes in the structure of mother-infant play

Developmental Psychology

Games parents play with normal and high-risk infants

Child Psychiatry and Human Development