Abstract

Research comparing maternal and paternal teaching styles is very limited and most previous literature addressed mainly the mother-child relationship with little attention to the father’s role. In addition, most studies done in this domain are older and have used mainly semi-structured settings, whereas little research has addressed mothers’ and fathers’ teaching of their young children during ongoing, naturalistic interactions at home. Thus, the aim of this study is to address and compare paternal and maternal teaching as they are applied with their preschool children in a naturalistic home environment. The data was originally collected by Hildy Ross in Waterloo, ON in 1986; it includes 39 middle-class dyads observed over a 2-year period in early childhood during ongoing interactions in the home setting for six 90-minute sessions at both times. In the current study, only the data from Time 2 when the children were aged four and six was used. The sequences of mothers and fathers teaching their children were identified first and then coded for teacher/learner roles, context (game, contingent activity, conflict), teaching strategies (e.g., direct instruction, labeling, demonstration, explanation) and child response (no response, rejection, compliance, and active involvement). Mothers and fathers did not differ significantly in the proportion of their teaching. Fathers taught significantly more in the game context than mothers and mothers taught significantly more in the conflict context. Moreover, parents were mostly directive in teaching their children and mothers and fathers did not differ in the proportion of teaching strategies used except in explanation in which the mother used such statements more than the father. Parental differences in teaching initiation, teaching frequency, teaching across context, teaching strategies, teaching across age dyads and differences in children’s responses were further examined and discussed.