Predicting play participation from parents’ views on play and parenting attitudes

Play begins at home. Parents are usually their children's first playmates from the first days of life. This study examined the predictive power of parents' views about play and parenting attitudes on their participation in children's play. The study sample consisted of 602 parents who had children attending public preschool-kindergarten programs in a city in southwest Türkiye. Data were analyzed by using multiple regression. The results showed that all types of play participation were statistically significantly related to parenting attitudes and their views about play. Democratic and authoritarian parenting attitudes were found to be determining factors, and democratic attitude was the strongest in predicting the level of parental participation in play. Regarding parents' views on play, only the positive play views subscale significantly contributed to predicting all types of play participation. Overall, the results demonstrate that the predictive power of parenting attitudes is higher on parents' play participation levels than their views on play. Implications for future research are discussed.