The role of preacademic activities and adult-centeredness in mother-child play in educated urban middle-class families from three cultures

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Highlights

  • Identification of the proximal mechanisms through which beliefs affect play behavior.

  • WEIRD mothers stress child-centeredness and non-academic play in mother-child play.

  • Mothers from Indian middle-class culture emphasize preacademic goals.

  • Indian children show more responsive play than children form WEIRD cultures.

  • Consistent associations between mothers’ and children’s play and preacademic activities.

Abstract

The present study analyzes similarities and differences in cultural beliefs about mother-child play and their manifestation in maternal and children’s play practices in three different educated urban middle-class cultures. Based on the general assumption that mother-child play is an important context for child learning and development in educated urban middle-class communities that should result in cross-cultural similarities in mother-child play, the current study also hypothesized culture-specific accentuations, namely a stronger emphasis on preacademic vs. non-academic play activities and on adult-centered vs. child-centered modes of interaction in Chennai, India, (n = 28) than in Münster, Germany, (n = 35) and New York City (NYC), USA, (n = 36). Maternal goals and strategies were assessed in semi-structured interviews and mothers from Chennai emphasized play goals and preacademic goals to similar degrees, whereas mothers from Münster and NYC accentuated play goals. In line with their emphasis on preacademic goals and strategies, Chennai mothers showed significantly more preacademic activities during play with their 2-year-olds, especially explicit teaching. Furthermore, Chennai mothers’ stronger emphasis on play directives and children’s higher levels of responsive play complemented the pattern of more adult-centered beliefs and practices. In contrast, mothers from Münster and NYC were more likely to emphasize child-centeredness, with significantly more goals revolving around child immersion in play activities and autonomy-supporting play practices, including autonomous exploration, toddlers’ leadership and control, and maternal responsiveness. Unexpectedly, toddlers from NYC engaged the most in preacademic activities, especially responding to maternal quizzing.

Introduction

In most modern societies, play between mothers and their children is a valued activity and, in these cultures, mother-child play is an important context for child learning and development (Lancy, 2007; Roopnarine, 2011; Roopnarine, Yildirim, & Davidson, 2018). Besides these similarities across modern cultures, these authors argue that maternal belief systems regarding mother-child play differ across cultures. With this in mind, the overarching goal of this paper is to analyze cross-cultural similarities and differences in both maternal beliefs about mother-child play and maternal and child behavior during mother-child play in early childhood. More specifically, this study integrates different levels of analyses by looking at how maternal beliefs are related to maternal practices and how these, in turn, are associated with children’s behavior during mother-child play. Such a process-related approach allows to specify the ways in which culture affects child development by identifying the proximal, interactional mechanisms through which maternal beliefs affect child experience and behavior and, in consequence, child development.

Concerning culture-specific belief systems on mother-child play, recent research with middle-class families has shown that for Euro-American parents, all facets of play, encompassing functional and symbolic play, and playful learning with a focus on preacademic activities, have a value in itself in fostering, amongst other skills, exploration, curiosity and creativity, social-emotional, cognitive and preacademic development (Roopnarine, 2011; Roopnarine et al., 2018). In contrast, for educated urban middle-class families from Asian countries, mother-child play is more an arena for preacademic activities (Parmar, Harkness, & Super, 2008; Farver, Kim, & Lee, 1995; Fisher, Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Singer, & Berk, 2011; Parmar, Harkness, & Super, 2004; Sengupta, 2016; van Oers, 2012). For instance, based on maternal reports, 70 % of mother-child play in Korean-American families was preacademic play (e.g., studying letters and numbers), while 90 % was nonacademic play in Euro-American families (Farver et al., 1995). In another study on educated middle-class families living in the USA, immigrant parents of 3- to 6-year-olds from multiple Asian countries (i.e., India, Pakistan, Nepal, China and Korea) emphasized nonacademic play as relatively less important and preacademic activities as relatively more important for their children than Euro-American parents (Parmar et al., 2004). This differential emphasis led to Asian immigrant families having a higher involvement in preacademic activities than Euro-American families, namely 3 h and 20 min per week vs. 20 min per week, based on day-to-day scores of children’s activities across a week (Parmar et al., 2008). Thus, while Euro-American ethnotheories on child play, meaning lay theories that regulate maternal structuring, seem to embrace academic, socio-emotional, and cognitive development (Fisher et al., 2011), Asian immigrant parents’ ethnotheories on child play primarily revolve around preacademic activities and preacademic developmental outcomes.

Beyond maternal beliefs concerning play and their specific role during play interactions, the structure of mother-child play interactions is embedded in more general cultural beliefs concerning children and their social relation to mothers and, more generally, other adults. One broad theme that permeates many if not most interaction formats is that of child-centeredness and adult-centeredness (Keller, 2007), which is similar to Lancy’s (2014) notion of neontocratic and gerontocratic values and orientations. According to Keller’s ecocultural model of child development, child-centered interactions are interactions that center around children’s preferences and autonomous exploration – the child is leading the interaction while the adult fosters autonomous exploration, is responsive to and approves children’s initiatives and provides options for children to choose from. According to this theory, child-centered interactions characterize socio-cultural contexts that emphasize children’s independence and autonomy, so-called autonomous or independent cultures. Importantly, child-centered interactions are an important interactional mechanism by which children’s internal mental states (e.g., preferences and desires) are accentuated and become an important reference point for children’s experience and behavior (Kärtner, 2015). Adult-centered interactions, on the contrary, put adults at the center – the adult is leading the interaction by prompting and initiating activities and children are expected to adapt and follow, with maternal disapproval and correction if necessary. This pattern is described as typical of cultures that emphasize proper demeanor and obedience as socialization goals, so-called relational or interdependent cultures. Applied to mother-child play, a first behavioral study by Keller et al. (2010) with educated middle-class families from Delhi, India, and Berlin, Germany, found that dyads from Berlin showed significantly more child-centered play patterns – characterized by high degrees of 19-month-olds’ play initiatives and maternal follow-up – than mother-child dyads from Delhi. Conversely, the dyads from Delhi showed significantly more adult-centered play – characterized by high degrees of maternal initiatives and children’s follow-up – than dyads from Berlin.

In sum, cross-cultural studies on mother-child play have either analyzed maternal beliefs – inferring implications for maternal play behavior – or maternal play behavior – assuming differences in maternal beliefs. Extending prior research, this study explicitly assessed both maternal beliefs about mother-child play and maternal practices and child behavior during mother-child play and analyzed whether and how beliefs and practices about mother-child play are organized into coherent patterns. More specifically, the aims of this study were to, first, identify mothers’ central beliefs about the specific goals and associated strategies of mother-child play, namely concerning preacademic (i.e., teaching and learning) and nonacademic play goals, the latter further subdivided into child-centered (i.e., children’s leadership and control, autonomous exploration and maternal responsiveness) and mother-centered (i.e., maternal prompting and demanding) play goals. Second, we examined how these beliefs were instantiated in maternal practices during a mother-child play episode at home, namely in terms of the relative emphasis on (i) preacademic activities vs. non-academic play and (ii) child-centered (i.e., mothers’ responsiveness and offering choices) vs. adult-centered (characterized by maternal prompts and directives) modes of mother-child play. Third, we analyzed to what degree children’s behavior reflected their mothers’ cultural emphasis, namely (i) children’s preacademic activities and (ii) children’s play initiatives (i.e., child-centered play) and responsive play (i.e., adult-centered play).

Since most studies so far compared US-American or European with Asian educated urban middle-class families, we decided to choose comparable samples, namely urban educated middle-class families from New York City, USA, Münster, Germany, and Chennai, India. Doing so, we extended previous research by including three – instead of only two – different socio-cultural contexts. Based on the model of Keller (2007) and findings from Keller et al. (2010), we assumed educated urban middle-class families from the two Western countries to represent an autonomous cultural model and educated urban middle-class families from a non-Western Asian country to represent a more relational cultural model.

Concerning mothers’ cultural beliefs, we hypothesized that, based on Parmar et al.s’ (2004, 2008) findings on the central role of preacademic activities in Asian cultural models, mothers from Chennai emphasize preacademic goals and values (i.e., both teaching and learning) more strongly than mothers from New York City and also mothers from Münster. Based on the findings from Keller et al. (2010) and the cross-cultural literature on child- vs. adult-centeredness, we hypothesized mothers from Münster and, by extension, mothers from New York City, to emphasize goals on child-centered modes of interaction (i.e., maternal responsiveness and toddlers’ autonomous exploration, leadership and control) more and adult-centered modes of interaction (i.e., maternal prompting and demanding) less strongly than mothers from Chennai. Concerning mothers’ and children’s behavior, we hypothesized that the same emphases manifest in behavior during mother-child interaction, namely more time is allocated to child-centered non-academic play (i.e., maternal responsive play and play offers and toddlers’ play initiatives) and less time is allocated to adult-centered non-academic play (i.e., maternal initiatives and directives and toddlers’ responsive play) and preacademic activities (i.e., maternal teaching and quizzing and toddlers’ responding and naming) in Münster and New York City than in Chennai.

Beyond the assumption that the cultural models are similar across the two Western samples, that is, middle-class families from New York City and Münster, previous studies revealed substantial differences in ideas about parenting and how maternal beliefs are implemented in daily practices between German and Euro-American mothers (Keller & Demuth, 2006). Similarly, a study comparing behaviors of French and Euro-American mothers, that would similarly be categorized as two autonomous socio-cultural contexts, found that there were similarities, but also differences during play interactions between mothers and their 20-month-old children (Suizzo & Bornstein, 2006). While mothers from both contexts engage in similar amounts of play, Euro-American mothers used speech and praise to scaffold their children’s play whereas French mothers more often took the spectator role rather than being actively involved in the activity (Suizzo & Bornstein, 2006). Therefore, we also explored differences between mothers from Münster and New York City.

Beyond testing the hypothesized patterns of similarities and differences across cultures, we also examined links between maternal goals and their own and their children’s behavior at an individual level, namely by analyzing the associations between all three levels within and across cultures. This more processual account is an important extension of previous research, since studies have also shown variation on how play episodes are conceived of and structured by mothers within cultures and such interindividual associations would further strengthen the dynamic relationship between maternal beliefs and practices and child behavior that is assumed to underly the cross-cultural differences found. For example, the study by Farver and Howes (1993) showed that Euro-American mothers differed in whether they took naturally occurring play episodes as teaching opportunities or whether they preferred a non-academic play format. Therefore, we expected similar correlational patterns across cultures concerning associations between goals and values associated with play and how these translate into mothers’ structuring and children’s behavior during mother-child play. More specifically, a relatively stronger emphasis on preacademic play goals should be associated with less non-academic and more academic play behavior for both mothers and children.

Section snippets

Participants

In total, 109 mothers and their children from three different cultures, 38 from Münster (Germany), 36 from New York City, NYC (USA), and 35 from Chennai (India), were visited at their homes. Ten mother-child dyads were excluded (n = 3 in Münster and n = 7 in Chennai) due to technical or procedural problems. The final sample for the analyses included 99 dyads. Children (52.5 % girls) were, on average, 24.74 months old (SD = 3.08). More than half of the children in each sample were the firstborn

Mothers’ goals and strategies reported in the semi-structured interview

On average, there were about 15 coded units of maternal goals and strategies per interview with no differences between cultures (see Table 3 for details). Since there were no consistent effects of maternal education or toddlers’ age and gender on the dependent variables characterizing maternal goals and strategies (see Supplement S1 for further details), these variables were dropped from the final analyses that consisted of ANOVAs with post-hoc t-tests with Bonferroni correction to follow up on

Discussion

The present study compared beliefs and practices concerning mother-child play between mothers and children from educated urban middle-class families in Münster, New York City and Chennai. We found both similarities and differences across these socio-cultural groups, suggesting that many aspects of these interactions may be common across the three groups whereas other aspects may be accentuated in culture-specific ways.

Generally, the similar number of play goals and strategies that mothers

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Joscha Kärtner: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Resources, Supervision, Writing - original draft. Antje von Suchodoletz: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Resources, Supervision, Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition, Project administration.

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by a grant to Antje von Suchodoletz from the New York University Research Challenge Fund Program (URCF 2017). The data collection in Germany and India was supported by New York University Abu Dhabi Faculty Research Funds to Antje von Suchodoletz. The authors would like to thank all children and mothers who participated in this project. They also thank Elena Doering and Shruty Kumarnathan for their contributions to data collection and coding.

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