Parents' Use of Music with their Infants: The Roles of Parents' Beliefs and Musical Background

The purpose of this research was to unite music and parenting, both societal functions of great significance and worth, in an effort to understand how they relate to each other. Specifically, the goal was to examine relations between infant music exposure and parents' beliefs regarding the importance of music as well as their own musical background. Data were collected as a part of the New Parents Project, a short term longitudinal study of the transition to parenthood. Parents who met all project requirements participated in four separate phases. The data that were used for the current study were taken from answers to specific questions administered 3 months postpartum. Both the frequency with which new parents expose their young infants to music as well as the various types of music parents expose their children to was examined. I further examined relations between infant music exposure and parents' perceptions of (a) the importance of music for their child's development and (b) parents' own musical background. I hypothesized that parents with more extensive musical backgrounds and stronger beliefs regarding the importance of music to a child's development would be more likely to expose their child to more forms and types (genres) of music. After analyzing the data, I found that parents are indeed using music quite frequently with their infants. Furthermore, the current study suggests parental beliefs and musical background may both be important to the variety of music that infants receive. Specifically, the beliefs of both mothers and fathers seem to be important to the amount of musical variety infants are exposed to, however, it seems that the father's background may be more influential than the mother's in predicting the variety of forms and types the infants are exposed to.NSF (CAREER 0746548)NICHD (K01HD056238)Initiative in Population ResearchHuman Development and Family Science Department at The Ohio State UniversityCollege of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State UniversityNo embarg