Transgenerational transmission of play & playfulness

Abstract

According to UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child Article 31, children should have their rights to play. Prior studies suggested play is an initial urge for our survival. Playfulness is essential ingredient of our creative mind and internalize to our personality trait. Playfulness believed enhance people resilience, stress coping, self-esteem, and parental ability. It determines our subjective welling-being and life-satisfaction. Under the haze of COVID19, the Stay-Home policy further decreases parent’s intention to let children play interact with others. Current study found positive correlated association between adult playfulness traits and parental style. A pair t-test indicated gender difference in Hong Kong parent’s playfulness OLIW obviously in Other-directed and Whimsical traits. Examined mediation modes indicated parental stress has mediated effect on intellectual and whimsical traits to authoritarian, permissive and uninvolved parental style tendency. Moreover, study discovered parent’s age and other-directed trait were positive associated to their children’s playtime. Finally, it investigated there was no association between existing parental style and child’s playtime. A quantitative online randomised research done by 161 Hong Kong parents, who aged 18 above, have a child age within 2 to 13 years old. Participants (N = 161) were assigned to answer the self-report survey within 3 weeks. Hyper-link had prioritized sent to parent’s chat room and Facebook group. Measure instruments were OLIW-S for Playfulness traits; Parent Stress Scale (PSI-SF) for Parenting Stress and Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ) for Parenting Style. This study conducted in a hope of remind parents to have a second thought on their parenting.