This paper examines the child development literature in an effort to determine the influence, if any, of parental rearing techniques and attitudes on children's play behavior. To provide context as well as a conceptual foundation for this examination, the presented review begins with a brief history and delineation of child development theory in general.
This delineation is followed by a review of current theoretical models of play. With the foregoing as foundation, the paper then examines research on how parents influence children's play behavior. The final section of the paper ties research findings into theoretical views.
According to Tomlinson-Keasey (1994), child development theory is really an umbrella term for a variety of theoretical and conceptual models attempting to explain children's physical, motor, and cognitive development over time. Although there have been numerous child development theories since the beginning of the twentieth century, Clarke-Stewart, Friedman and Koch (1991) state that current theoretical perspectives of child development have their roots in work accomplished during the 1970s and 1980s.
In this regard, the authors state that the contribution to theoretical speculation on child development in the 1970s resulted in--as a function of greater research focus on infancy--a shift in the notion of an infant as passive to the perspective of the infant as an active organism capable of initiating contact and influencing his/her surroundings. In turn this fresh perspective led the field into a an increased interest in understanding cognitive development and the establishment of perceptual consistencies.
Clarke-Stewart et al. further reported that in the 1980s, the focus on children's cognitive development expanded through the proliferation of several information processing theories, these being theories in which cognitive development models were based on concepts taken from the fields of ...