Elsevier

Developmental Review

Volume 57, September 2020, 100924
Developmental Review

Father-child play: A systematic review of its frequency, characteristics and potential impact on children’s development

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2020.100924Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Fathers spend a large proportion of their time with their children engaging in play.

  • This is often in the form of physical play such as rough and tumble.

  • Fathers’ play frequency increases from infancy and declines as children reach school age.

  • Early father-infant play is linked to positive social, emotional and cognitive outcomes.

Abstract

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.

Introduction

An infant’s first playmate is often their parent or primary caregiver. 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 and 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. For example, Mermelshtine and Barnes (2016) found that a mother’s responsiveness to her infant during play at 10 months of age positively predicted higher cognitive capacities and skills (e.g., problem solving, knowledge and memory) at 18 months. Play between parents and young infants is often a synchronous interaction, involving the coordination of gaze, vocal and tactile signals. In a longitudinal study, Feldman and Eidelman, 2003, Feldman and Eidelman, 2007 followed premature infants at birth, 3, 6, 12, and 24 months and at 5 and 10 years. The authors found that at each time point, mother–child synchrony predicted child self-regulation at the next assessment. This research indicates that early “serve and return” interactions such as those seen in parent-infant play, are important for the development of fundamental socioemotional skills in children.

While research has pointed towards the importance of early parent–child play, findings have been overwhelmingly focused on mothers only. Despite this, there is increasing research on the fathers’ role in early child development, including some focus on father-child play. A body of evidence on father involvement and engagement strongly suggests that high quality fathering provides cognitive, social and emotional benefits for children. Several studies report that positive father involvement in infancy is related to fewer behavioural problems in childhood, even after controlling for maternal characteristics (Lewis and Lamb, 2006, Ramchandani et al., 2005, Amato and Rivera, 1999). Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, and Lamb (2000) found that having an emotionally invested father was associated with better well-being, cognitive development and social competence. Similarly, Bronte-Tinkew, Carrano, Horowitz, and Kinukawa (2008) found that father involvement, including cognitively stimulating activities, physical care, paternal warmth and caregiving activities, was associated with lower likelihood of infant delay. In a review of longitudinal evidence on the effect of father engagement, it has been concluded that father engagement enhances cognitive, social and behavioural outcomes (Sarkadi et al., 2008, Barker et al., 2017).

When considering play and playful interactions specifically there are a broad range of forms and types of playful interactions to be considered. These include, but go beyond, the constructs discovered in key early investigations on early mother-infant interactions, such as sensitivity, warmth, and limit-setting by researchers including Tronick, Brazelton, Murray and others (e.g. Brazelton et al., 1975, Gusella et al., 1988; Lucassen et al., 2011, Waller et al., 2015). In studying play these concepts have a key place but are also supplemented by others including; excitement, fun and physical forms of play including rough and tumble play. Each of these aspects of play may influence child development and later child outcomes, potentially through a variety of potential pathways, some overlapping, some different. There is no one theory that adequately accounts for this multiplicity of pathways of development and different aspects of father-child play might be best described and understood through different theoretical approaches. To allow for some framing of this complex picture we briefly consider three key relevant theories here; attachment theory, social learning theory and activation theory.

Attachment between a parent and child and the closely related concept of parental sensitivity in interaction was originally applied to the relationship between a mother and young child (Bowlby, 1969, Brazelton et al., 1975). In subsequent research and practice it has become clear that the central tenants apply to fathers and other carers in similar ways. Aspects of these earliest relationships including contingency, sensitivity and predictability of responses from carers allow the young child to build a mental model (described as internal working models) on which a child builds and predicts future relationships. In the first months of life this model is developed based on a parent or carers patterns in caring for the child, but as a child grows older other relationships and other related activities become a key playground for the development and cementing of early attachment patterns. To the extent that a father is an early carer and playmate of the young child, the patterns of play and relationship will have significant and long-lasting effects on the child’s social, emotional and behavioural development (Grogh et al., 2012).

Social learning theory is relevant to play in several ways, but one key one is the way that parents may use “play as practice”, essentially modelling for their young child important developmental skills such as communication and language, turn-taking, autonomy, and other cognitive and social skills that are required for functioning and well-being (Valentino et al., 2011, Bernier et al., 2016). There is also some evidence that infants learn about play through their parents’ play. For example, cross-cultural findings have shown that where parents emphasise particular types of play, infants tend to engage in those same types of play (Bornstein et al., 1999; Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, Cyphers, Toda, & Ogino, 1992).

The third theory of note here is activation. This is potentially more unique to aspects of father-child play in so far as it relates to physical and rough and tumble play. Researchers and theorists of the father-child relationship have suggested that aspects of the interaction may be more important in terms of children’s development. Paquette (2004) has emphasised the importance of fathers ability to excite and temporarily destabilise children in interaction, partly through the encouragement of risk taking. This is encompassed in his term the “father-child activation” relationship, in contrast to mother–child attachment. Whilst the similarities between mothers and fathers interactions with their infants are often greater than the differences, there are differences on average, and findings from several studies suggest that aspects other than sensitivity are important in predicting children’s outcomes from father-child interaction, including excitability and engagement (see for example, Paquette et al., 2003, Sethna et al., 2017). This activation frame to considering father-child interaction is most clearly represented in rough and tumble play. This tends to occur more as children get older, but nonetheless exists in fathers play with infants. This activation framework is a helpful way of viewing father-child play, and we will use it here, however, in this review we aim to consider father-child play more broadly, including rough and tumble play, but also other forms of play that occur at this stage of development.

We will review different aspects of father-child play in the following document. The extent of overlap between mother–child play and father-child play is probably greater than the differences in many cultures. However, reviews of the evidence to date suggests that fathers’ play is generally more physical than mothers’ play and may have important implications for children’s self-regulatory skills (StGeorge & Freeman, 2017). Parent-child physical play generally refers to when parents gently challenge their children to use their body or exert their strength (Paquette, Bolte, Turcotte, Dubeau, & Bouchard, 2000). This may manifest as limb movements, bouncing and tickling in infancy, as well as typical “rough and tumble” play in toddlerhood. Rough and tumble play has been defined in the literature as a type of physical play which can involve vigorous activities such as wrestling, grappling, kicking and tumbling accompanied by playful cues such as playful facial expressions, laughing and smiling (Smith, 2010). Although rough and tumble play is generally most prevalent in the preschool years (Pellegrini & Smith, 1998), boisterous physical play in infancy is likely to be a precursor. As well as child age-related changes in the nature and prevalence of fathers’ rough and tumble play, a meta-analysis by StGeorge and Freeman (2017) also noted findings which suggest a child gender effect on fathers’ rough and tumble play. Boys tend to receive more physical play than do girls from their fathers, as infants (Parke & O’Leary, 2009), as 8-month-olds (Power & Parke, 1982), and as 3- to 4-year-olds (MacDonald & Parke, 1986). In terms of other child outcomes related to father-child physical play, StGeorge and Freeman’s meta-analysis found negligible relationships with child aggression, positive associations with parent and teacher rated child social competence, and positive associations with emotional skills such as encoding and decoding. The set of studies reviewed by StGeorge and Freeman (2017) illustrate important links between a specific type of father-child play and children’s socio-emotional skills. It is of interest, therefore, whether these findings extend to other types of father-child play in the first three years of life.

Other researchers (Cabrera et al., 2017, Menashe-Grinberg and Atzaba-Poria, 2017) have looked beyond physical play, and rather have attempted to measure a degree of “playfulness” quality in fathers; a global measure of how imaginative, creative, humorous and curious fathers are during play. Using this measure, Cabrera et al. (2017) found that father playfulness in toddlerhood was associated with subsequent vocabulary growth in a sample of low income families. Furthermore, it was found that elements of fathers’ play strengthened associations between mothers’ play and child outcomes. Specifically, the association between mothers’ playfulness and children’s vocabulary and self-regulation was strengthened when fathers engaged in more pretend play and children showed positive affect during the play.

In sum, it has been established that early parent–child interactions are important for a variety of children’s cognitive, social and emotional growth. In infancy, parental play can take on a variety of forms including physical, pretend, object, symbolic and game play, and appears to be related to child emotional and cognitive development. While the vast majority of research has focused on mother–child play in infancy, evidence has shown that positive father involvement in early childhood has a unique and beneficial impact on children’s behavior and cognitive competence. Despite the evidence on positive father involvement in children’s lives, relatively little is known about the nature and contributions of father play specifically. There have been some excellent previous contributions on father-child play. These have tended to focus either more broadly on father-child interaction across a broad span of childhood or on specific aspects of father-child play such as rough and tumble play (e.g. Majdandžić, 2017, StGeorge and Freeman, 2017, Popp and Stjerne Thomsen, 2017). Whilst important we wanted to consider the broad scope of father-child play in the critical early period of development from 0 to 3 years. With this in mind, our aim was to systematically review the available scientific literature to examine key aspects of father-child play with young children (aged 0–3 years). We specifically addressed three key aims:

  • 1.

    To examine the frequency/duration of fathers’ play during infancy (ages 0–3 years).

  • 2.

    To characterise the nature of father-child play.

  • 3.

    To explore links between fathers’ play and infants’ social, emotional and cognitive development.

While the key aims specified above are the primary focus of this review, some additional findings of interest will be discussed. These include differences between paternal and maternal play and paternal characteristics related to play. While the primary aims of this review were concerned with fathers solely, it is worth acknowledging the broader landscape in which this literature sits. Specifically, research on fathers’ play has oftentimes studied mothers’ play as a comparator. Rather than omit this important and substantial work, we felt that it was necessary to include findings on mother-father comparisons, in an attempt to understand more deeply, the role of fathers’ play in children’s lives.

Section snippets

Sample

Following PRISMA guidelines (see PRISMA checklist in Appendix A), a systematic review of articles was carried out in April 2018 using four psychological and educational databases: PsychINFO, PubMed, ERIC and British Education Index to retrieve articles focussed on father-child play in infancy and toddlerhood (protocol presented in Appendix B). A broad range of search terms relating to play were entered, with no restrictions on publication year. The thesaurus feature within the databases

The frequency/duration of fathers’ play during infancy

Before considering the characteristics of father-child play and how it might influence children’s development, it is important to consider whether and how often fathers do actually play with their children. In this review, a measure of fathers’ overall play frequency during infancy and toddlerhood (age 0–3) was included in 21 of the studies (published between 1977 and 2017). In this section we first describe the measures used to assess the frequency of play and then summarise findings on

Conclusions and future directions

Maternal play during infancy and early childhood has been of interest to psychologists and educationalists for many years. There has been considerably less focus on fathers’ engagement in playful interactions and how these might impact upon child development. This systematic review included a total of 78 studies on fathers’ play with children aged 0–3 years old published between 1977 and 2017 that fulfilled our criteria.

The first section of this review summarized studies that have explored

Conclusions

This review outlined the evidence of the frequency, characterisation and impact of fathers’ play. Through an investigation of this literature, it was highlighted that fathers’ play has unique features that distinguish it from maternal play, as well as overlaps. For example, this review has highlighted that fathers’ play with their children occurs as frequently as mother–child play, when parental work hours are taken into account. There is some evidence to suggest that there are changes in

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by an unrestricted donation from the LEGO Foundation.

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