Preschoolers' characterizations of multiple family relationships during family doll play

Investigated 4-year-olds' depictions of family relationships during a semistructured doll play task. Examined developmental and family correlates of these depictions, and their relative stability over a 1-month period. Forty-nine children related stories about happy, sad, mad, and worried families using dolls reflecting their own family configuration. For each story, coders recorded (a) proportion of total story time devoted to each family dyad and (b) number of conflictive, aggressive, and affectionate acts per dyad. Children divided their focus during stories evenly between father-child, mother-child, and father-mother relationships with child-sibling interactions occurring regularly among participants with siblings. Depictions of affection and aggression among family figures were relatively commonplace, related to mothers' reports of family climate, and stable across a 1-month period. Results substantiated preschoolers' awareness and discrimination of intrafamily relationship dynamics and provided some guidelines and cautions to practitioners who employ doll family assessments in their clinical work.