SALT LAKE CITY – Hey, all you beleaguered parents, here are two things you may not need to worry about doing today: playing with your kids and, subsequently, feeling guilty that you didn’t get around to it.
There’s no real evidence that children benefit from playing with their parents, according to Utah State University anthropologist David Lancy.
“In much of the psychological literature … there is this unquestioned assertion that mothers play with their children and that is normal. If they don’t, (the implication is that) there’s something wrong, even going so far as to say the infant or child would be harmed,” Lancy said.
To the contrary, “the evidence of positive effects is pretty slim,” he said.
That doesn’t mean Lancy wants you to stop playing with your children. He just wants you to stop feeling bad if you don’t.
“If you like it and enjoy it and it’s fun for you, why not? That’s great. For a parent who feels forced to play with their child, it’s not a good thing. Not for them, and probably not for their kids, either,” he said.
That might be welcome news for many Americans. A 2004 article published in Science reported that parents found spending time with kids about as appealing as doing housework or commuting.
In America, parent-child play is a recent thing. The Puritans “condemned play in general,” and it wasn’t until the 1940s that play became a good thing, rather than “wicked.” Today, it drops off outside the middle class, Lancy said. And the cultures that value parent-child play are centered in the West – North America and Europe – and in Asia.
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