“That is not fair!” Any parent or teacher knows how early in children’s lives this notion drives human behavior, motivation, and belonging. When children feel they are treated fairly, they develop a sense of safety and predictability, and find reason to comply with rules and legitimize authorities. Parents and teachers are justice gatekeepers in children’s lives. How they handle conflict and discipline shapes children’s expectations of justice in other settings.

Most children and adolescents do not have direct contact with legal authorities, such as police or judges. However, one of the ways they build their perspectives is based on the justice they have grown to expect from closer authorities. Data from a diverse group of 680 Brazilian adolescents revealed that parents’ justice at home and their evaluations of school fairness predicted how adolescents perceived their personal access to justice and the justice of the world at large. Furthermore, adolescents’ world views of justice predicted how much they legitimized the law and avoided delinquent behaviors the following year.

It is easy to think about justice as simply getting what you deserve, but that bypasses one of the more powerful cognitions of justice – the process of justice. Procedural justice considers the respect, neutrality, voice, and fairness of the authority’s actions. A child may not agree that she should be disciplined for her dishonesty, but if the parent is respectful, explains the rules, and listens to the child, she is more likely to continue respecting her parents’ authority, despite her frustration. The point is not to be lenient, but to emerge on the other side with your child’s respect so that, even when consequences are firm, the child experiences the safety and predictability of justice.

“How parents and teachers handle conflict and discipline shapes children’s expectations of justice in other settings.”

It is vital that children experience justice and come to expect it. Harsh punishments or rules without explanation do not feel fair, and chip away at the legitimacy youth attribute to authorities at large – and that illegitimacy makes them vulnerable to future delinquency.

When you find out your child has done something wrong, do you:

• Listen to their side of the story?
• Talk to them politely?
• Explain why you are disciplining them?

Youth should be given the chance to articulate their perspective and practice civil dialogue in common daily scenarios. When children are consistently given a chance to explain their perspective and be respected by the authorities they know, they will anticipate and even demand to be given the same rights in society.

The world is not a fair place, and failing to expose injustice underprepares children at best, and leads them to blame the victims or be the victims at worst. The goal is not to have children believe the world is fair, but is to make their lives fair so they can be equipped with the courage to engage in positive civic behaviors and avoid fatalistic mindsets.

“We want to raise children to speak up and expect to be heard and understood.”

We want to raise children who are equipped for the challenges of the world. Doing so begins by providing a safe haven at home and at school, where they can learn to connect their actions to outcomes and to be outraged by, not cynical of, injustice. We want them to have good reasons to legitimize their authorities. We want to raise children to speak up and expect to be heard and understood. We must model for them the kind of justice we want them to demand from society.

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Mom or dad sharing and modelling how to manage aggression and upset may explain why some impoverished young children grow up more resilient.

Why do some children who are raised amid poverty, risk and danger emerge as more resilient than others in similar circumstances ? Why do some grow up relatively unscathed compared with their peers, whose later lives may be scarred by criminality, poor mental health, and repeated disadvantage?

Having a calm, supportive parent when something goes wrong may be part of the answer. That’s a mom or dad who responds to early childhood frustration, anger, anxiety or tantrums by neither suppressing those emotions nor ignoring them. Rather, such parents are empathetic and understanding, and they help children to steady themselves. They also model this steadiness in the way they deal with the adversities that they encounter. That’s not easy for parents who may themselves be struggling with multiple challenges. But our research suggests that doing it well can make a big difference for their children.

Emotionally supportive parenting has long term impacts

This parental skill of helping young children handle their emotions – in difficult social and economic circumstances that may provoke many strong feelings – can support emotional self-management. This in turn enables young children to concentrate better at school and get along with others. We know from other studies of self-regulation that, in the longer run, these skills help children to grow up at lower risk of anxiety, depression, violent behavior and criminal acts. As adults, they operate better at work, at home and within the law.

We’re not necessarily talking about parents working miracles amid adversity. Emotionally supportive parenting can’t turn around every impact of the many difficulties faced by children who, in their early years, may experience poor, crowded housing, an inadequate diet, and insufficient stimulation, surrounded by badly resourced neighbourhoods. But our research shows that, for these children, emotionally supportive parenting can flatten the curve: it can at least stop things from getting worse.

“What do parents do, when, for example,  a young child becomes angry because someone has done something unfair to them, such as take their toy?”

Our study examined the relationship between emotion-related parenting and externalising symptoms such as aggression across early school years among 207 children (two-thirds of them boys) from high-risk urban communities in the United States, who showed aggressive/oppositional behaviors when they started school. Their mothers’ level of supportive, emotion-related parenting was observed in the year of kindergarten during structured interactions at home. Our measure captured how parents responded to children’s emotions, how parents talked about emotions, and the way parents expressed their own emotions. Teacher ratings of externalising symptoms, including aggressive and rule-breaking behaviors, were then measured every year to the second grade.

Aggression rose amid less-skilled parenting

Aggressive behavior worsened among children who lacked emotionally supportive parenting. Each year, teachers reported seeing more problems than in the year before. In contrast, when mothers offered supportive emotion-related parenting, the children did not necessarily improve, but they didn’t get worse. Emotionally supportive parenting seems to halt the escalation in aggression as children grow older, which, research shows, can predict so many difficulties in later life.

In practical terms, we are talking about what parents do, when, for example, young children become angry because someone has done something unfair to them, such as take their toy. A child might want to scream, start crying or punch the child that took the toy. But a parent can encourage a range of strategies to help the upset child avoid following this first impulse.

Doing so might be difficult. The parent might be struggling with a host of other serious issues, such as how to pay the rent, living in a dangerous neighbourhood and parenting a difficult child. These problems can weigh on the parents, making it hard for them to sympathise in the moment about the relatively insignificant problems faced by their child. Mom or dad’s response might be: ‘Life’s unfair. You have no idea. I hate my job.’ They might think it best to toughen up the child to face disappointments, telling them to suck it up and cope with it.

But that’s not as helpful – even when the upset seems to be around something apparently trivial – as when a parent sympathises, talks things through, and helps the child understand their feelings. Simply labelling an emotion, saying it is normal, helps children regulate their reactions. Parents can also help children develop a step-by-step strategy when feeling upset, such as taking deep breaths and calming themselves. Afterwards, parents might say, ‘I’m sorry that your toy was taken, but let’s leave it in the past and do something fun now.’ That can help children who are feeling negative to know that their emotions are understood while giving them a way of coming back and feeling better.

Opportunities to model emotion-related parenting

A lot of parents also find opportunities in daily life – when a young child is not expressing emotions – of exploring feelings and how to handle them. When parents and children read a book, they might encounter a character who is experiencing difficulties. That’s an opportunity to talk about what the character is feeling and what the character could do.

Parents can also model how they deal with their own stress. Parents are the gateway to the world for young children. Stress can either flow through parents by affecting how they respond to their children, or parents can make the decision to demonstrate how stress can be handled. This doesn’t mean parents should hide their emotions, or the fact that they are upset or scared. Children are way too good at picking up on that. It’s better for parents to acknowledge that they are worried and explain how they are going to handle what’s going on. They can say: ‘This is how we will resolve it and, if you are worried about it too, let’s do something together about it.’ These parents are modelling that emotions are normal and that there are ways to manage them.

In our research sample, we did not see a lot of emotionally supportive parenting. Only 10 per cent of the mothers showed consistently emotionally supportive parenting. But where they could offer it, we saw a flattening of the curve, so that, over time, the increased aggression and externalising behavior found in other children were less likely to occur.

Learning to be more empathetic parents 

There is potential to improve this picture further. Few programs specifically focus on emotion-related parenting. One that does so is Tuning in to Kids, which has been tested in low- to middle-income families in Australia. This program had moderate to strong effects, at least in the short term, in improving parents’ supportive behaviors and in reducing parents’ dismissive reactions to children’s emotions.

“Emotionally supportive parenting seems to halt an escalation in aggression as children grow older, which can predict so many difficulties in later life.”

It has also been shown to be effective when implemented in families with children who already demonstrated behavioral problems (similar to our sample), or went through traumatic experiences. And researchers also found improvements in children’s behaviors when parents participated in the program, compared to a control group. This evidence suggests that there may be strong potential to promote supportive, emotion-related parenting behaviors through training programs, even for families in disadvantaged situations.

Many other parent training programs, such as Triple-P and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, may not specifically target emotion-related parenting, but they include components that try to promote parents’ sensitivity to children’s emotional cues, such as signals that may indicate a child is upset, and teach parents skills to help children regulate emotions.  These programs have been tested in diverse populations, including families living in disadvantaged communities or families with children already showing behavioral problems. They have led to more positive parenting, such as warmth, effective discipline, and sensitivity, as well as improvements in children’s behaviors.

Parents should recognise their achievements

A key message from our research is that children may display behavior problems for many reasons, particularly given the multiple difficulties that disadvantaged families face. Parents should not beat themselves up and be judged as failures if their children continue to have behavioral problems. Their interventions might be doing a lot to stop their children from getting worse amid multiple challenges. That huge achievement should be celebrated.

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The key predictor of antisocial behavior and violent crime (as opposed to nonviolent crime) is poor emotion regulation in early childhood.

A very small group of boys grow up to become involved in persistent antisocial behavior and violent offending. Research has confirmed that there are reliable predictors of antisocial behavior in boys as early as the age of two or three.

A key predictor of violent crime (as opposed to nonviolent crime) is poor emotion regulation in early childhood. Where this is linked to persistent conduct problems through childhood, particularly when combined with hyperactivity/attention problems, there is a correlation with male violence and antisocial behavior in adolescence and early adulthood.

The problem mainly relates to boys. Research has suggested that the male brain is more vulnerable to adverse influences in early childhood. See Male violence: Early childhood development predictors.

The research suggests that violence prevention programs should prioritise the development of self-regulation skills in boys living in urban poverty, through working directly with them and through parenting programs. Some programs have already been successful in this regard. The High-Scope Perry Preschool Study reduced early violent antisocial behavior by targeting self-regulation skills in early childhood. Other programs, such as the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) curriculum and Family Check-Up, have improved children’s emotion regulation and reduced conduct problems. Positive parenting is often associated with the improvement in child conduct in these programs.

Stephanie Sitnick and colleagues have carried out research into early childhood precursors of male violence and antisocial behavior in young adulthood. They studied data from the Pitt Mother & Child Project, a study that followed low-income high-risk youth from the age of one until they were 20 years old; 310 families participated at the start, and 256 were still going at the end. The researchers measured child oppositional behavior, child emotion regulation and quality of the home environment. They also measured conduct problems throughout the period (physical aggression, oppositional behavior, temper tantrums) and hyperactivity/impulsivity/low attention. At 20 years, they measured violence and antisocial behavior both through court records and by interviewing the young adults. Their key finding was the link between poor early emotion regulation and adult antisocial behavior and violence.

A considerable amount of other research has linked early childhood development problems with later male violence and antisocial behavior, particularly impulsive, reactive crimes. Correlates include:

• impairments in early executive function
• poorer recognition of facial emotions linked to antisocial behavior
• poor early attachment and rejecting parenting
• oppositional behavior in early childhood
• poor self-control, particularly for those living in poverty.

Other factors linked to violence and antisocial behavior, reviewed by Adrian Raine, include the following.

Genetics: Studies of aggression in identical versus nonidentical twins show 65% heritability for aggression. Heritability for domestic violence is over 50%. Heritability relates more to impulsive/reactive violence. The genetics are complex and the only single gene found to occur more in violent offenders is MAOA (Monoamine Oxidase-A).

Brain impairments: Neurological impairments can be seen in several parts of violent offenders’ brains relating to emotion regulation, moral decision-making and impulse control. In particular, reduced structure and reduced glucose metabolism is often observed in the prefrontal cortex. The striatum is also more likely to be enlarged. The striatum is associated with the reward system and may suggest an oversensitivity to rewards in violent offenders.

Physical influences: The research suggests a variety of physical predictors of antisocial behavior and violence.

• Poor prenatal nutrition is associated with increased risk of antisocial personality disorder in adulthood. Child malnutrition is linked to aggression in childhood. One fatty acid critical for brain development, omega-3, is not produced by the body but is present in some foods, such as fish—and countries with diets high in fish have lower murder rates.
• Maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy is linked to persistent offending. These links are stronger when other sources of stress exist, such as single-parent family status or an unwanted pregnancy.
• Alcohol consumption during pregnancy has been shown in many studies to be a risk factor for adult antisocial behavior and violence. Paternal alcohol consumption is also linked, possibly through epigenetic inheritance.
• Some birth complications, such as hypoxia, are linked to adult impulsive violent
• Lead exposure has been linked to adult antisocial behavior and violence. Lead is neurotoxic and affects boys more than girls, another indication of boys’ increased vulnerability to adverse influences in early childhood.
• Some traumatic brain injuries are linked to later violent behaviors.

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The best way to prevent chronic physical aggression in boys is intensive and long-term interventions initiated early in life targeting disadvantaged mothers.

Following research into aggression in children dating back to the 1980s, two leading researchers from Canada, Richard E Tremblay and Sylvana M Côté, have presented a wide range of factors that predict aggression and antisocial behavior in children, boys in particular. These include both genetic and social influences. Male aggression exceeds female aggression by a large margin and has done so for a long time. The ratio of female to male homicides in France 200 years ago was almost exactly the same as in the USA in 2014: 11.7:100 and 11.6:100 respectively.

The intergenerational nature of male aggression leads the authors to recommend that the best way to prevent chronic physical aggression and other antisocial behavior problems is intensive and long-term intervention initiated early in life and targeting disadvantaged mothers. This breaks the intergenerational transmission of violent behaviors.

Genetic influence on aggression

Large studies of twins have revealed the extent of genetic influence on physical aggression. Genetic factors explain 50% to 63% of the variance in frequency of physical aggression in children at 20 months. The link between genetics and physical aggression is stronger than the link between genetics and language development. However, this influence substantially diminishes as time goes on, while new influences come into play.

Parents’ life experience

When mothers report antisocial behavior during their own adolescence, their children are considerably more likely to display chronic physical aggression between the ages of 17 and 42 months. Chronic physical aggression in children is more frequent if the mother is young, poor, separated from the father, has not completed high school, has smoked during pregnancy, or suffers from depression.

This intergenerational phenomenon is exacerbated by assortative mating: mothers with poor childhood experiences are more likely to partner and have children with fathers who have had similar experiences.

A key mechanism of the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage is epigenetic change. The DNA methylation profiles of boys displaying chronic physical aggression are different from those of other boys (in 448 places on the genome in one study). Children whose mothers show more mental illness, more criminal behavior or more substance abuse have higher methylation of the oxytocin receptor gene at birth and later show higher callous-unemotional traits at 13 years of age. Similarly, boys displaying higher aggression have lower serotonin synthesis in the brain. This is linked to higher methylation of genes in the serotonin pathway.

Aggression begins early

In the 1990s, Tremblay found that physical aggression often starts in the second part of the first year after birth, substantially increasing in frequency up to the third year, then declining slowly. Aggression emerges between six and 42 months of age, after which a child would normally learn to control it. There is a substantial difference between boys and girls: 5% of boys between 17 and 29 months use physical aggression frequently, whereas only 1% of girls do.

Aggression in kindergarten and elementary school predicts aggression in adolescence

Other research by Tremblay in the 1990s in Canada showed that greater physical aggression among kindergarten boys predicts chronic physical aggression in adolescence. Another study in Canada, New Zealand and the USA found that boys showing high chronic physical aggression in elementary school were more likely to show the same in adolescence. This link was not seen for girls.

The authors note that the danger posed by aggression in childhood increases as children grow larger from 6 to 12 years of age.

In a randomized controlled trial in the early 1980s, Tremblay and colleagues found that a programme to address aggression and hyperactivity in kindergarten boys from low socioeconomic areas had positive outcomes for the children later in life: less aggression at the ages of 7 to 9, less physical aggressions and thefts at the ages of 11 to 17, increased rate of high-school completion and fewer criminal offenses in early adulthood. The programme consisted of both home-based parent training and school-based help for social and cognitive skills.

The evidence thus points to the importance of early intervention, starting at home before kindergarten.

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Male violence exceeds female violence by a very significant margin. The origins of this lie in early childhood development, with the first differences appearing in preschool.

Two researchers in the USA, Paul Golding and Hiram E Fitzgerald, have identified three areas that influence male violence during early childhood development: (1) early relationships with caregivers, (2) biological differences between boys and girls, and (3) growing economic and social inequalities among families in the USA, particularly the growing number of single-parent families.

Male violence exceeds female violence by a large margin. Starting in preschool, boys in the USA are more likely to be disciplined and suspended for behavior problems. By adolescence, boys are four times more likely than girls to be arrested for violent crime. In adulthood, male violent crime is four times more common than female violent crime. And men are seven times more likely to commit serious violent crimes, such as murder, rape and robbery. Among major ethnic groups in the USA, only Asian Americans display little difference between male violence and female violence.

Early caregiving and the emergence of male violence

Research has shown that certain deficits in early caregiving are linked to worse outcomes for boys than for girls. For example, sons of depressed mothers score lower than daughters on measures of attachment at 18 months of age. Similarly, sons who experience maternal insensitivity are more likely to display poorer executive function and more behavioral problems in primary school than girls who experience the same deficit at home.

Similar differences appear in measures of fathers’ sensitivity. For example, when fathers fail to exercise dominance during rough-and-tumble play (that is, establishing limits so that the child feels safe), boys are more likely than girls to show aggression and poor control of emotions five years later.

But the question remains: Why are boys more affected by these caregiving deficits than girls are? The authors propose that the slower maturation of boys during infancy expands the scope for stress in the social environment to have a negative impact on their development. Girls are protected to an extent by their more rapid development in early childhood.

Biological and neurobiological factors

In addition to slower development, other biological differences between boys and girls could be linked to differences in the development of male and female violence.

• Boys are more likely to have lower resting heart rates than girls, on average. Lower resting heart rates in children are associated with uncomfortable mood states, seeking stimulation, and antisocial behavior.
• Boys are more likely to have the MAOA-L gene. This gene, when combined with abusive or neglectful caregiving in early childhood, is associated with impulsive physical aggression later in life.
• Boys are exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the prenatal and perinatal periods of development and also starting in adolescence. Children’s exposure to testosterone is associated with less empathy and more aggression.
• Differences in the neurobiology of boys and girls at birth are now being studied to see whether they may point to differential vulnerability to problems in early childhood development.

Social and cultural environment

Golding and Fitzgerald consider the expanding social, economic and racial inequalities in the USA to be a critical factor in increasing the risk of male violence.

The rise of single motherhood (4% of births in the 1950s, 35% 60 years later) is one factor. Single parenthood is associated with a wide range of pressures, for example, fewer economic resources, exposure to discrimination, more likelihood of exposure to conflict, and more mental health problems. All these incur risks for a mother’s ability to care for her children, to which, as described above, boys are more susceptible.

The absence of fathers in children’s lives is linked to developmental problems in both boys and girls, but the nature of the problems are different: boys are more likely to show behavior and social problems (externalising), while girls are more likely to show anxiety and depressive problems (internalising). This differential response manifests as more aggression among boys.

Studies have shown that growing up in poor, single-parent families has differential impacts on boys and girls . Boys from such families are less likely to be employed in their 20s than are girls from the same families. Boys from these families are more likely than girls to exhibit antisocial behavior such as low self-control and delinquency.

In the coming months, the Child & Family Blog will run a series of research updates that expand on the emergence of male violence, based on a collection of research articles published this year in the Infant Mental Health Journal.

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Sustained, moderate-to-severe play deprivation during the first 10 years of life appears to be linked to poor early child development, later leading to depression, difficulty adapting to change, poorer self-control, and a greater tendency to addiction as well as fragile and shallower interpersonal relationships. Play deprivation in childhood has come up in numerous interviews that I have conducted with some of America’s most violent criminals.

This emerging evidence is set against childhood environments where outdoor play has decreased by 71 per cent in one generation in the US and UK. Intergenerational play and ‘family’ games are also in decline. Poverty and fewer opportunities to play are endemic, particularly in inner cities.

Joe Frost, the leading American scholar of play, contends that the diminution, modification and/or disappearance of play during the past 50 years is causing a public health crisis and a threat to societal welfare that may last generations. 

Findings on play and early child development

Mounting evidence regarding the impact of play deprivation on early child development and social and emotional learning comes from three sources: behavioral studies of mammals; neuroimaging and chemical analysis of animal brains during and after play; and exploring the childhood play histories of thousands of human adults.

The evidence remains incomplete because it would be unethical to deprive human infants or young children of play intentionally. But findings are sufficiently compelling to demand that we rethink early child development policy and practice around play in homes and in early years’ institutions and schools, and that we reconsider how adults lead their lives.

Photo: Shutterstock

Researchers have detailed behavioral evidence in rats showing both the deleterious effects of play deprivation and the positive effects of adequate play. Rats do not function well if they don’t play. Play-deprived rats can’t distinguish friend from foe. They don’t mate well, and they are less resilient than normal rats in response to stress. All rats react with fear and flee if they are subject to a cat odour-laden stimulus. However, rats that play get over it and return to normal. Play-deprived rats don’t get over the stress well. 

Play primes the brain for social and emotional learning 

There are parallels with severe play-deprivation in individual humans – particularly young children who find themselves unable to play because, for example, they are caught up in wars, severe poverty, or abusive home settings. When these children do not play normally, they may have real difficulty joining in with the human tribe and recovering from their experiences. That’s because belonging to your own social group is a complex social and emotional learning experience, catalyzed by play.

When they reach elementary school, severely play-deprived children may not have learned the complicated languages of play which harmoniously bring together the cognitive, emotional, physical and social elements that are all necessary for personal competence in playing.

The social and emotional learning that allows safe play between kids occurs slowly. A child who has not had early experience of healthy play may overdo the play process or may simply not understand what is going on. These children can become isolated or bullied, or they may become bullies. The lingering effects of childhood play deficits echo in later adult attitudes about becoming a viable part of a community.

Behavioral evidence around play-deprived children is reinforced by studies of rats. These experiments show the anatomical benefits of healthy play, which activates a wide array of genes in the prefrontal cortex. This is the executive area of the brain, governing decision-making for rats as well as other social mammals, including humans.

Jeffrey Burgdorf at Northwestern University created an experiment in which rats, aged between four and 15 weeks, engaged in rough-and-tumble play. After they had experienced intense play, he found that between 300 and 1,200 genes had been activated in the prefrontal cortex. The late Jaak Panksepp, a play neuroscientist and co-author, with Lucy Biven, of ‘The Archaeology of the Mind,’ suggested that as many as 3,000 genes in the cortex may be activated by play. In short, play seems to be vital in crafting social brains.

“Rats do not function well if they don’t play. They can’t distinguish friend from foe. They don’t mate well and they are less resilient than normal rats in their responses to stress.”

This work needs finer analysis. We do not yet fully understand the processes by which chemicals such as dopamine, endocannabinoids, opiates and IGF-1 are released in the brain. We need to know more about how neurotransmitters and neuro-hormones operate in response to play experiences and how they can influence brain development, functioning and lifetime plasticity. 

Early child development of young male murderers 

Another piece helps to build a fuller picture. My own research, conducted since 1968, has involved around 6,000 individually conducted play histories. It correlates play deprivation during early child development with the predilection of felons for violent, antisocial criminal activities. We found the play experience of homicidal individuals to be vastly different from that of other human beings. Their childhoods were typically characterized by isolation, abuse or bullying. 

As a clinician reviewing incarcerated young male murderers, I noted that none of them, in their self-reporting or in family recollections, remembered ‘normal’ playground rough-and-tumble play. They were unable to remember the names of playground friends. Bullying and inappropriately acted out aggression were their ‘play’ patterns. There is an intriguing parallel here between rats and antisocial humans: behavioral research shows that rats deprived of rough-and-tumble play don’t possess the social skills to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate aggression. 

Early child development underpins play ‘drive’ 

The skills and capacities to play seem to begin to develop in humans very early on, from the first communications between mother and child. Normally, joyfulness naturally erupts between mother and infant as they perform baby talk spontaneously and instinctively.

This attunement and bonding between parent and infant underpin a sense of safety, and they are accompanied by mutual joy that provides grounding for the play drive to respond to opportunities that arise. In contrast, when that attunement process between parent and child is interrupted or does not occur, early child development is disrupted. Then infants tend to see the world as threatening and unsafe, and they are less ready for play.

Allan N. Schore, a leading neuropsychologist, has shown how fine attunement and trust between mothers and infants produce mutual electrical rhythms that shape the baby’s brain and, likely, set the foundations for a child being able to play and establish trust with other people. 

Risks of ‘helicopter’ parenting for social and emotional learning 

For parents in general, an issue that is more relevant than severe play deprivation is the need for children to be able to respond to play within their own instinctive capability. Parents or caretakers should allow that natural gleeful pleasure in play to emerge in its own way. However, ‘helicopter’ parents sometimes orchestrate how they think infants should play rather than leave them free to respond.

Photo: Shutterstock

When children are highly sensitized to what the adults want to see, or their parents have a fixed plan for what their children should become, they may learn to suppress their intrinsic play experience to fit the adult who is trying to mold them. So authentic play is set aside to gain their parents’ approval.

Among my early interviewees was Charles Whitman, whose childhood play history featured consistent play deprivation due to an overbearing and disturbed father. In August 1966, in Austin, Texas, Whitman killed his mother and his wife. Then, by sniper fire from the University of Texas clock tower, he killed more than a dozen people and wounded more than 30. His preschool teachers, recalling Whitman’s childhood, said that, rather than spontaneously engage in activities of his choice, he would look carefully to see what pleased the teacher. He mimicked what he thought would be appropriate rather than picking behavior that was true to himself. He became a gifted mimic, hiding his inner feelings from others.

Such compensatory behavior occurs among many play-deprived children – they can become skilled in pleasing adults and in conforming behavior. In doing so, they are not expressing their own motivations. That intrinsic motivation is found in childhood through play. If children don’t play, they do not find the authentic exuberance that is so obvious in the playground when they play freely from within themselves. 

Play-deprived early child development 

In contrast, severely play-deprived children will tend to engage in automatic and repetitive activities, failing to engage socially. In later childhood, the play-deprived child may have more explosive reactions to circumstances rather than a sense of belonging.

As adults, they are often unoptimistic and subject to smoldering depression due to a lack of joy in their lives. They tend to be more ideologically fixed and certain with little ambiguity in their social worlds. That’s because play fosters the social and emotional learning and acceptance that ambiguity is a part of complex and human interactions.

Play-saturated children tend to have more resilience. They feel comfortable with, and are curious to know, other children who are different. Tolerance and developing empathy are natural outgrowths of more complex play processes.

Rough-and-tumble play provides nuanced social learning that inclusion and exclusion is part of the politics of human beings getting along. It is not a life or death thing – you can roll with the punches and still belong to social groups. A child who does not gain this social and emotional learning may become hyper-reactive to criticism, interpreting it as exclusion. 

“Reviewing incarcerated young male murderers, I noted that none of them remembered “normal” playground rough and tumble play … Bullying and inappropriately acted out aggression were their “play” patterns.”

The late Brian Sutton-Smith, a pioneering play researcher, contended that among adults who continuously disrupted a group process in, say, a church or civic organization, one could normally find that play deficits had occurred in their childhoods which appeared to keep them from ‘belonging.’ This disrupted early child development created a lack of social skills and made it difficult for them to participate in tribal sharing and cooperative activity in an adult unit. 

Play implications for social and emotional learning 

Is there a play crisis? We should certainly be alert to the possibility. Numerous influences are currently diminishing access to self-organized childhood play. We do not know the outcome of these many influences.

All parents should identify their own play nature, recognize the spontaneous play natures of their children, and allow environments to nourish those natures. The anarchy of normal play at preschool should be given space. Within it lies a complicated learning process, as complicated as learning to read.

The social and emotional learning that is fundamental in play behavior is vital for human survival. Play might seem trivial in industrial societies, but we should understand that it exists because it helps us adapt to each other. It is a basic aspect of human socialization that lets us have more fun with each other and, yes, helps to keep us from killing each other and allows a cooperative ethic to develop in each of us.

Play also equals learning. Children engaged playfully will have memorable learning experiences. If math is joyful with a playful teacher, children learn better. Play should be infused into the education system because it makes learning joyful and school into a source of reward, not a punishment.

In the West, we have distorted life by separating work and play, forgetting our pasts as hunter-gatherers, in which sharing and joyfulness were integrated into the task of finding food. Honoring a human need to be in a state of play and seeing this as a public health necessity is as important as hand washing, good nutrition or careful driving.

Educators, pediatricians and families should advocate for and protect unstructured play and playful learning in preschools and schools.

Teachers should focus on playful rather than didactic learning by letting children take the lead and follow their own curiosity.

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Engaged fathering usually means other family relationships are going well. That’s why it predicts successful development in children.

For more than 30 years, we’ve known about an intriguing finding: a father’s involvement early in development is often the best predictor of a child’s success later on – for example, in achievement tests at 16 or in avoiding a criminal record by the age of 25. In short, the more involved a father is, the better children tend to do in school and the more likely they are to avoid criminal behaviour, even nearly two decades later.

But what does that mean? You could be forgiven for concluding that raising children well is all down to the direct and wondrous influence of men upon their progeny. All that’s required is to pour a bit more precious paternal magic into a child, and, hey presto, the job’s done.

But child development is much more complex than that. For a start, children determine a lot of their own development, irrespective of what mum and dad have in mind. It’s not all down to parents. We also know that a successful upbringing depends on a host of subtle variants in multiple relationships – between parents and child, parent and parent, and with other relatives and key people who take part in children’s lives.

Fatherhood and other relationships

How, then, does all this fit in with the suggestion that a good dose of dad is all the medicine that a child needs? Looking a little deeper into the evidence, it becomes clear that paternal involvement is, in fact, not simply a good in itself, though it certainly has intrinsic benefits. It’s also a marker for the healthiness of all the other relationships that, together, make such a difference to human development.

“You cannot extract an essence of fathering – or, indeed, of mothering – because these relationships are themselves a complex product of a wider range of relationships.”

In particular, father involvement is typically an indicator of how well mum and dad get along. That’s because a big benefit to children from parental engagement springs from actions that relate to responsibility – taking care the lunch box is ready, that the child is safe. Fathers may do those things only when the mother encourages them or leaves a space for them to do so. Thus, although the fathering is important in itself, it often highlights what’s happening between mum and dad. The health of the couple relationship is, in turn, the strongest predictor of a child’s social and emotional development.

And if parents separate, this link between parental cooperation and father involvement is crucial. If dads remain involved in many ways, this typically suggests that the co-parenting relationship is going reasonably well, even if the romantic relationship has hit the rocks. Some parents may even hate each other’s guts yet share a commitment to parenting the children that is as solid as when they were a couple.

Impacts of fatherlessness

Understanding child development as a function of multiple relationships and networks also helps us understand fatherlessness better. It explains why children without fathers often develop in perfectly normal ways. Having a network of positive relationships can be harder without dad, but it’s not impossible.

Photo: David Werner. Creative Commons.

Research shows that children in fatherless families typically do worse academically and in emotional and social development, compared with children in two-parent families. But many of those problems are caused by financial difficulties and continuing animosity between the parents.

This way of looking at parenting highlights that it’s a mistake to imagine that you can extract an essence of fathering – or, indeed, of mothering. There is no such essence, because both father-child and mother-child relationships are themselves a complex product of a wider range of relationships.

Too much focus on parenting classes

All of this should matter to policy makers as they try to support child development. Policy and practice run the risk of focussing simply on “training” mothers or fathers. This approach is based on the mistaken view that there is some sort of mechanistic relationship between parental skill and children’s outcomes.

My research has involved speaking to parents from very different circumstances and backgrounds. Most are more than “good enough” parents. Many feel a need for help in what they do, but that does not mean they need to take a class to learn how to do it.

“Policy should concentrate on ensuring that the networks vital to parents are aiding rather than impairing their child-rearing.”

Advice for policy makers

 So where does research suggest policy should focus? It should concentrate on ensuring that parents’ vital networks are aiding rather than impairing their child-rearing. So it is important to ensure that employment, the law, education, and medical and social services all strengthen the relationships in which children and their parents function. Many of these services have been slow to recognise the importance of supporting fatherhood – for example, by providing leave from work or access to help when a child is ill or after a relationship breaks down.

The research also suggests that policy should support good parental relationships, helping parents when their relationship breaks down and requiring them to co-parent their children even when the romantic relationship has ended.

What should fathers do?

The message for fathers is to ensure that they maintain the network of family and other relationships in which their parenting sits. Too many men naïvely hand the maintenance of those relationships to their partners. Then, they are surprised to find that, in separation, they have lost their network when they most need it, leaving them – and the children – isolated and impoverishing the parenting that they can offer.

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James Ray at the University of Texas at San Antonio, USA, studied 1,216 first-time juvenile offenders three times in the course of a year. He and his team found that 26% of the link between callous/unemotional traits and delinquent behaviour could be explained by the young offenders’ association with delinquent peers. But the influence of delinquent peers disappeared when parental warmth and supervision were present.

But the effect occurred only when parental warmth and supervision were both present. Parental warmth without supervision actually strengthened the links between callous/unemotional traits, association with delinquent peers and delinquent behaviour. It appears that warm but permissive parenting makes matters worse.

This study highlights the importance of parenting in managing youthful offenders, particularly young offenders who associate with delinquent peers.

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The study reinforces the idea that in developing supports for parents we need to consider their own childhood experiences.

The study found two distinct correlations. The first was between a mother’s report of her own adverse childhood experiences and a high and increasing level of conflict with the father over the first 4½ years of their child’s life. The second correlation was between this increasing conflict and the child’s increasingly disruptive behavior over the same period.

The researchers, led by Sheri Madigan at the University of Calgary in Canada, studied 469 families, running measurements four times during the first 4½ years of the child’s life. They divided parents into three groups: “high increasing” conflict (22%), “high decreasing” conflict (7%) and “low stable” conflict (71%). They asked mothers about childhood experiences such as household conflict, drugs, alcohol, sexual and physical abuse and parental imprisonment.

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