Play is important to children's healthy development. Despite the critical role that caregivers provide in children's everyday lives, little is known about parents' beliefs about play and how these beliefs might influence children's play behavior. In this article, Fisher and colleagues discuss two studies they conducted to investigate play beliefs and their relationship to children's learning and behavior among U.S. mothers and child development professionals.
Over 1100 mothers with 0- to 5-year-old children and almost 100 child development professionals participated in an internet survey about play.
In analyzing study data, Fisher and colleagues found that mothers conceptualized play as being either unstructured (activities generally involving imagination or creativity) or structured (activities generally involving specific goals) and that there were three general groups of mothers that varied in their play beliefs: 1)"traditional" mothers (44% of mothers) rated unstructured activities as highly playful and structured activities as less playful; 2) "all play" mothers (45% of mothers) rated unstructured and structured activities as highly playful; and 3) "uncertain" mothers (12% of mothers), while being highly variable, tended to rate unstructured activities as being somewhat playful and structured activities as being neither playful nor unplayful. Researchers also found that while, overall, mothers rated structured play as having more learning value than unstructured play, mothers differed in the learning value they associated with different play behaviors based on their play beliefs. For example, researchers found that "all play" mothers placed a significantly higher academic value on unstructured play as compared to "traditional" and "uncertain" mothers. In addition, Fisher and colleagues found that the frequency with which children were reported to engage in unstructured and structured play varied according to their mother's play beliefs. For example, researchers found that children of "all play" mothers were reported to engage in significantly more unstructured play than children of "uncertain" and "traditional" mothers. When comparing play beliefs among child development professionals and mothers, researchers found that while both mothers and experts viewed play as essential to children's future academic learning, the two groups differed with regard to their specific play beliefs: in contrast to mothers, experts rated unstructured activities as being more playful and of greater academic learning value than structured activities.
This study provides important insight into the different meanings of play and how future efforts may best address balancing unstructured and structured play in children's lives.
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