Sometimes it’s near impossible to predict what kind of parent someone will be before the child is born, but one study suggests parenting style can be predicted by having the potential parents play with dolls.
According to a recent TIME article, “researchers at the Ohio State University videotaped almost 200 dual-earner couples playing with a “doll” — actually pajamas filled with 7 lb. of rice and a green fabric head attached — that they were told represented the child they were about to have. Nine months or so later, after the child was born, they videotaped the couples interacting with their actual baby and compared the two.”
What they found at the end of those nine months how the parents interacted with each other with the dolls was very similar to how they looked playing with the dolls. “Spouses who said encouraging things to each other and cooperated as they interacted with the doll were also observed doing so with their actual child. Spouses who said things like, “You’re not going to hold the real baby like that are you?”, were critical after the real child was born. Couples who shared time with the doll in the study were similarly sharing responsibility for the real baby.”
One of the researchers was surprised by the similarities.
“‘Even though I believe that the co-parenting relationship begins to develop prior to a child’s birth, I had to see it for myself to be convinced,’ said Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, a professor of human sciences at the Ohio State University. ‘It still amazes me that five minutes of play with a doll can predict co-parenting behavior with the real infant one year later.'”
The study suggested that early intervention with couples with co-parenting issues could make things smoother when they became actual parents, and of course that can only help therapists strengthen secure bonding and attachment.
