Jean-François Bureau

Do we laugh more with mom?

Is that more important with dad?

Is that more important with mom?

Is this a big component of the relationship?

Tell me more about that.

There is a few myths here that it's important to address.

So first of all, in general, moms spend way more time with children than dads, just in terms of number of hours.

So the first thing that's really important, mothers spend more time per week playing with children than fathers.

So the idea that only dads, it's our specialty and dads are playing and moms are boring.

This is kind of a myth because moms spend more time playing.

Dads spend a bigger proportion of their time playing.

So that's one thing.

In our research, we look at the different strategies parents are using.

We were expecting mom to be more verbal, songs, things like that, with dad being more physical.

And we were kind of surprised to see that moms are using the exact same amount of tickling and chasing and rough and tumble kind of thing.

And children were laughing as much with mom and dad.

So there were no differences there.

But it seemed to be more central in the relationship with father, which was interesting too.

It brings an interesting nuance where it suggests that...

Look, mom and dad are as capable of making a child laugh.