Father-child play in a public playground: Roles exhibited by fathers during their play with children

Şenil Ünlü-Çetin

African Educational Research Journal
Published: October 26 2020
Volume 8, Special Issue 2
Pages S149-S157
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30918/AERJ.8S2.20.042

Abstract

Presently, fathers spend more time with their children when compared with the fathers of previous ages and play compromises the majority of the father-child shared time. Few researches that investigated the roles of fathers during their play with children made use of (1) home-based or laboratory-based observations with pre-determined play materials and (2) conducted Western cultures. These two characteristics of previous studies have led to this study, which is conducted in Turkey, a country that is relatively collectivistic and based on observations of father-child play in a public playground which is a natural play-setting. Nine (9) different father-child dads were observed in a public playground for approximately 30 min. The researcher was the main observer during this process. The findings revealed seven different role categories, three of which were newly found in the current study. These seven categories were merged under two different themes. The discussion of findings which centered on the ides of father-child play were influenced by the culture and the context that it occurs.

Keywords: Father involvement, play, father-child play, father roles.

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