Comparisons of levels and predictors of mothers' and fathers' engagement with their preschool-aged children
Open accessAbstract
Self-report data from 112 two-parent families were used to compare levels and predictors of four types of mothers' and fathers' engagement with their preschool aged children: socialization, didactic, caregiving, and physical play. Mothers were more involved than fathers in socialization, didactic, and caregiving, whereas fathers were more involved than mothers in physical play. Mothers' greatest engagement was in caregiving, whereas fathers were about equally engaged in didactic, caregiving, and physical play. Mothers who contributed more to family income were less engaged in socialization and caregiving, whereas fathers with nontraditional beliefs about their roles were more engaged in didactic and caregiving. Children with greater temperamental effortful control received more didactic and physical play engagement from mothers. Fathers were more likely to engage in socialization activities with earlier-born children, whereas mothers were more likely to engage in socialization with girls high in effortful control. Mothers were more likely to engage in physical play with boys and with later-born children.
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A predominance of mothers were included due to self-selection bias, consistent with previous education studies, and the study faced difficulties recruiting lower-income families.
“Consistent with previous education studies, a predominance of mothers were included due to self-selection bias [51, 66], and we faced difficulties recruiting lower-income families [56].”
From SET-PAiREd: Designing for Parental Involvement in Learning with an AI-Assisted Educational Robot (2025) · cites this paper as [66]
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- Rothbart MK Bates JE Eisenberg N Damon W Lerner RM Temperament Handbook of child psychology: Vol 3. Social, emotional, and personality development 2006 Hoboken, NJ Wiley 99 166
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SET-PAiREd: Designing for Parental Involvement in Learning with an AI-Assisted Educational Robot
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- Authors
- Schoppe-Sullivan, S. J., Kotila, L. E., Jia, R., Lang, S. N., & Bower, D. J.
- Affiliations
- The Ohio State University
- The Ohio State University (US)
- ORCID
- Lang, Sarah N.
- Venue
- Early Child Development and Care
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2012-09-03
- Volume
- 183
- Issue
- 3-4
- Pages
- 498-514
- ISSN
- 0300-4430 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-8275
- PMC
- PMC3640561
- OpenAlex
- W1964660001
- Cited by
- 109
- References
- 53
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 8.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Early Child Development and Care (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Ohio State University
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R03HD050235)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Social Sciences › Education › Parental Involvement in Education
- Keywords
- parental engagement, mothers, fathers, preschool children, socialization, caregiving, physical play, gender differences, household income, gender role beliefs, effortful control, birth order, sex differences, child temperament
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