Perspectives of Infant Active Play: A Qualitative Comparison of Working Versus Stay-at-home Parents

Abstract

Background: Parents play a key role in infants’ development through their interactions and the type of environment they provide for their child to promote active play. The amount of time parents are able to spend with their infant is dependent on their working status, yet few studies have explored parents’ perceptions of their infants’ active play by parental working status. The purpose of this study was to explore parents’ perceptions of active play and compare responses between working and stay at home parents. Methods: Twenty-nine parents participated in this qualitative study by completing a one-time, in-person semi-structured interview based on the Theory of Planned Behavior. Themes were developed and the proportion of working and stay at home parents who responded within each theme were used to compare for differences between working status using a directed content analysis approach. Results: All parents believed active play could have a positive effect on their child’s development through physical, social and emotional, cognitive, and/or language and communication development. However, stay at home parents reported a broader impact of active play across these domains; whereas working parents most often referenced active play as impacting infant’s physical development. Social and emotional interactions were the highest reported form of active play among all parents. Additionally, all parents described similar barriers to increasing the time for active play. The most commonly reported barrier for all parents was time or schedule followed by care needs of the infant, environmental concerns, and need for restrictive devices (e.g., car seats). More stay at home parents than working parents reported the care needs of the infant as being a barrier. Recommendations for active play were not widely known amongst all parents, with a higher percentage of working parents reporting they would listen to a healthcare provider.Conclusions: Working status of parents seems to have implications on certain aspects and perceptions of active play which in turn may influence infants’ physical development. Future studies should objectively assess the impact of parents’ working status on infant development and explore how gender of the parent may serve as a confounding variable.