Playful parents make happier parents
Last Thursday morning I worked from home as usual, but that day I also had the company of three kids who were home from school for the second day in a row, courtesy of polar vortex weather paralysing parts of the US.
As I tried to read about a new study finding that fathers are happier than mothers, the children came in and out of my office, arguing, yelling and even crying about pancakes for a full
15 minutes.
At last, I was able to get some quiet minutes to digest the study, recently published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. University of California-Riverside psychologists analysed three studies – which together covered
18,000 people – and determined that fathers experience more wellbeing from parenting than mothers do.
One possible explanation for this, said the study’s authors, was that fathers reported playing more with their children, and they suggested that all parents might benefit from more play.
My first reaction to the news that I should make myself happier by adding more play to the list of things I already do for and with my children was not a good one.
So I called Katherine NelsonCoffey, the lead author of the study to get the full story.
She explained that her paper reported on three studies for which she and her team collected and/or analysed data.
The first two studies found that parents generally report greater wellbeing than nonparents, with fathers reporting greater wellbeing than mums based on measures including experiences of positive emotions, depressive symptoms and daily hassles.
The third study went a little deeper: How do mums and dads feel when they are doing various things for or with their kids? Participants downloaded an app on their phones and, three times a day, they entered what they were doing, whether they were talking or interacting with anyone, and how they felt.
The dad happiness advantage was most dramatic for child care. ‘‘Fathers reported greater happiness during child care than for anything else they did that day, whereas mothers reported lower happiness during child care than for other activities during the day,’’ says Nelson-Coffey.
In the study, dads were more likely to report playing with their children at the same time they were interacting with or taking care of them.
I asked if it was possible that dads play more because they’re happier, and therefore feeling more playful? Yes, she agreed.
The study can tell us that dads are happier, but not exactly why. ‘‘It’s certainly plausible that fathers who are feeling happy are more likely to initiate play with their children,’’ she says.
‘‘I would expect it would become a kind of feedback loop where fathers are feeling happy, so they might initiate more play, and that might make them feel happy, and it becomes kind of an upward spiral.’’
And couldn’t there be other reasons for the happiness difference – like the fact that mums do far more labour at home and in child care?
Nelson-Coffey agreed that time and labour could be factors, and that other research ‘‘tends to find that mothers are more responsible for child care in general, and they also have more emotional and invisible labour, such as keeping the household running, managing schedules, worrying about their children’s emotions.
‘‘All of these things are possibilities that could explain why mothers are less happy.’’
Nelson-Coffey says that other studies have found that play ‘‘could offer opportunities for positive emotions, to build connections with the child and to generally feel good’’. So, even if we don’t feel like playing, it’s possible that we mums can fake it till we make it – that trying to be playful might actually help us to feel happier.
That doesn’t mean that ‘‘play with kids’’ needs to become yet another burden.
Instead, we can try to inject a little playfulness into what we’re already doing. That play might be as simple as singing a nursery rhyme or tickling the baby’s toes. ‘‘We can’t stop taking care of our children,’’ says NelsonCoffey. ‘‘But if we can introduce play into those moments, hopefully it will make those moments feel a little bit better.’’