Survey of the Home Music Environment of Children with Various Developmental Profiles

Abstract

Families with young children with and without developmental disabilities often engage in musical experiences in the home. These parent-child musical activities are associated with positive outcomes for children and parents and may be a context to help foster strong parent-child relationships. However, little is known about how musical experiences differ across diagnostic groups or their relevance to parent-child attachment. Using an online questionnaire, the current study examined musical experiences and their relationship with parent-child attachment for 340 families with young children with typical and atypical development. Musical experiences were common in all diagnostic groups. Diagnostic groups differed in active musical engagement, potentially relating to the differing phenotypes of various developmental disabilities. Parent-child music engagement was associated with parent-child attachment, even when controlling for relevant variables. Promoting musical experiences may be an accessible way to support the parent-child relationship across diagnostic groups with implications for informal music engagement and parent-child therapy.

Musical Engagement and Parent-Child Attachment in Families With Young Children During the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…Studies of preschool children are rarer and have mixed results, with some reporting the use of music daily ( Blackburn, 2017 ) and others reporting less frequent use ( de Vries, 2009 ). The types of musical activities in early childhood are also varied ( Steinberg et al, 2020b ). Several studies note that singing is a frequent parent-child musical activity ( Ilari, 2005 ; Blackburn, 2017 ; Mendoza and Fausey, 2019 ).…”

Musical Engagement and Parent-Child Attachment in Families with Young Children During the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…Parents frequently engaged in musical activities with their child during the Covid-19 pandemic. Even though life and routines drastically changed for families during the pandemic, parent-child music activities remained a part of parent-child interactions consistent with the ubiquity of parent-child musical engagement during non-pandemic times (Steinberg et al, 2020).…”

“…Items were summed for a total Parent-Child Attachment score (Cronbach's alpha = 0.78). The PAQ was originally intended for use with infants but has also been used to assess parent-child attachment in older children (e.g., Goodman & Glenwick, 2012;Steinberg et al, 2020) because it emphasizes parents' feelings towards their child, rather than children's feelings or behaviors towards the parent. We changed the word "baby" to the word "child" in order to make the survey more applicable to our sample.…”

“…Studies of preschool children are rarer and have mixed results, with some reporting the use of music daily (Blackburn, 2017) and others reporting less frequent use (de Vries, 2009). The types of musical activities in early childhood are also varied (Steinberg et al, 2020). Several studies note that singing is a frequent parent-child musical activity (Blackburn, 2017;Ilari, 2005;Mendoza & Fausey, 2019).…”

“…Different music activities can have different purposes. For instance, parents may use passive musical activities, like listening to music or watching music videos, to keep their child occupied, while active, joint parent-child music activities, like singing or dancing, may be used as a social experience (Lense et al, 2020;Steinberg et al, 2020).…”