The Quality of Father–child Rough‐and‐tumble Play and Toddlers’ Aggressive Behavior in China

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of the quality of early father-child rough-and-tumble play (RTP) on toddler aggressive behaviors and more fully understand how child, mother, and father characteristics were associated with higher quality father-child RTP among contemporary urban Chinese families. Participants included 42 families in Changsha, China. Play observations of fathers and their children were coded for RTP quality. The specific RTP quality of father-child reciprocity of dominance was associated with fewer toddler aggressive behaviors, as rated by both fathers and mothers. Mothers' democratic parenting attitudes were associated with higher quality father-child RTP. These findings suggest that higher quality father-child RTP may be one way in which some fathers influence children's expression of aggressive behaviors, and the quality of father-child RTP may be influenced by the broader family, social, and cultural contexts.

Commentary on Fathers’ Play: Measurement, Conceptualization, Culture, and Connections With Child Development

“…Two types of play are addressed by these studies: the quality of pretend play (“playfulness;” Cabrera, Karberg, Malin, & Aldoney, ; Menashe‐Grinberg & Atzaba‐Poria, ) and physical “rough‐and‐tumble” play (RTP) (Ahnert et al., ; Anderson, Qiu, & Wheeler, ; StGeorge & Freeman, ). Both types of paternal play appear to have meaningful relations to a variety of child outcomes.…”

“…However, the consistency of parenting behavior across settings, locations, and types of play is still understudied, in particular for the recently developed measures used by the empirical articles of this special section. In addition, single tasks, as well as structured tasks in which parents are instructed to exhibit certain behaviors (Ahnert et al., ; Anderson et al., ), do not reveal how often parents actually engage in play of these kinds in daily life. To increase ecological validity, fathers’ and mothers’ play is ideally observed in a wide range of play settings, including settings that induce spontaneous play, and complemented with questionnaires to assess the frequency in which parents play in daily life (e.g., Majdandžić, et al., ).…”

“…Playfulness was operationalized in two of the studies as a global quality measure of the degree of creativity, imagination, humor, and curiosity that parents use when they play with their child (Cabrera et al., ; Menashe‐Grinberg & Atzaba‐Poria, ). RTP quality and reciprocity dominance were described and assessed by observation of father and child behaviors on a large number of carefully selected items (Anderson et al., ). Physical play was described with explicit ratings of definitions and measures (frequency, duration, or quality) in the meta‐analysis (StGeorge & Freeman, ).…”

“…A noteworthy difference in conceptualization between the studies is the extent to which the play measures reflect relatively pure parental behavior versus the relationship with the child. The operationalization of playfulness (Cabrera et al., ; Menashe‐Grinberg & Atzaba‐Poria, ) is more a measure of parent behavior whereas activation intensity and quality (Ahnert et al., ), as well as RTP quality and reciprocity dominance (Anderson et al., ), explicitly include behaviors of the child in the play measures. In the latter cases, the play measure is arguably a good and important estimate of the quality of the parent–child play relationship, but the child's contribution to the measure may inflate associations with child outcome.…”

“…However, Anderson et al. () showed that Chinese fathers’ reciprocity dominance is a stronger predictor of less child aggression than the quality of RTP assessed in a more comprehensive manner. These findings demonstrate the importance of careful identification and operationalization of key elements of play to gain knowledge about what aspects of play influence which child outcomes, ultimately increasing our understanding of the mechanism by which play affects child development.…”