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Examining Canadian Parents’ Attitudes Toward Outdoor Free Play

Date

2023-12-22

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9707-1138

Type

Thesis

Degree Level

Masters

Abstract

Free, child-led play has been identified as a developmental requirement for all children (Brussoni et al., 2015; Grey, 2011; Gray et al., 2015; Piaget, 1962; Vygotsky, 1978; Yogman et al., 2018). Parents’ attitudes towards allowing and restricting outdoor free play opportunities have been found to be a leading factor in why children do not engage in outdoor free play like previous generations did (Clements, 2004; Kepper et al., 2020; Murray, 2018; Niehues et al., 2013). Parental attitudes appear to be influenced by many factors (i.e., Clark & Dumas, 2020; Holloway et al., 2018; James 2014) including the social context in which they live and raise their children (Kepper et al., 2020; Kracht & Sissons, 2018; Lee et al, 2015; Riazi et al., 2019). Parents have become increasingly uncomfortable permitting outdoor free play alongside the prevalence of single-child families, and family structures in which there has been less sibling support to build in peer relationships (Loebach et al., 2021; Pynn et al., 2019; Shaki et al, 2022). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore Canadian parents’ attitudes toward free outdoor play and how variations in the structure of families and social relationships may influence the extent to which parents allow or restrict their children’s outdoor free play. Six hundred and nine (609) Canadian parents completed an online version of the Parental Attitudes Towards Their Child's Recreation (PACOR) scale (McFarland et al., 2011, 2014) to explore attitudes towards outdoor free play. A 2-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine if there were any significant differences between the means of the dependent variable (i.e., parental attitudes) and the groups of independent variables (i.e., family structure or number of children, reported community cohesion). Post-hoc comparisons were used to explore differences and interactions between the group means while controlling for the experiment-wise error rates using Bonferroni corrections (Wilkinson, 1999). Findings included parents of single children reporting the lowest comfort level ratings related to allowing their children to engage in outdoor free play opportunities. Parents who had more children reported more positive attitudes towards allowing their children outdoor free play opportunities. In relation to the student researcher created variable that sought to measure parents’ ratings of community cohesion by having participants respond to three questions, parental attitudes appeared to become more restrictive when there were more than two children in the family and when community cohesion was rated highest. This finding was most likely due to how the variable of community cohesion was created and analyzed (i.e., student researcher created variable may not be measuring the construct of community cohesion, arbitrarily set cut points). However, there are likely other factors influencing parental attitudes towards outdoor free play in more socially connected communities (i.e., peer pressure increasing societal expectations, etc.). These findings can help to improve our limited understanding of Canadian parents’ attitudes toward free outdoor play. Future research should consider how the construct of community cohesion could be better represented and measured, parents’ considerations of the importance of playmates in the absence of siblings, and the significance of community socialization for smaller families.

Description

Keywords

Outdoor free play, Unstructured Play, Parental Influence on Play

Citation

Degree

Master of Education (M.Ed.)

Department

Educational Psychology and Special Education

Program

Applied Measurement and Evaluation

Part Of

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DOI

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