Background: Parents are responsible for rules and limits regarding screen use by preschool-aged children. In this study, we aimed to investigate the association between mothers' parenting styles and preschool children's video game playing.
Methods: Two hundred and sixty-four mothers who had children aged 2-5 years were included in this cross-sectional study. The mothers filled out a structured questionnaire including general questions about demographic and video gaming characteristics and a parental attitude scale (PAS). PAS consisted of four subscales: "Authoritative," "Authoritarian," "Overprotective," and "Permissive." Subscale scores were categorized into the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd tertiles. Adjusted Odds ratios (AORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. To assess the impact of PAS's subscale score tertiles on video gaming, multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted.
Results: 29.2% of children were playing video games. Video gaming was associated with older age, male sex, low paternal education, having an older sibling, and exceeding the recommended daily screen time (p < 0.05). Multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that mothers' high authoritarian [AOR: 2.47 (1.25-4.90)] and overprotective [AOR: 3.62 (1.69-7.79)] scores were associated with video gaming. When other parenting styles were included in the multivariate analysis, only the overprotective parenting style was associated with video gaming [AOR: 3.70 (1.68-8.16)].
Conclusions: The findings highlight a potential association between maternal overprotective parenting style and video gaming in preschool children.
Keywords: overprotective mother; parental attitude scale (PAS); parenting styles; preschool children; video gaming.
© 2025 Japan Pediatric Society.