Across demographics and recent history, most parents sing to their infants and toddlers daily

Abstract

Music is universally prevalent in human society and is a salient component of the lives of young families. Here, we studied the frequency of singing and playing recorded music in the home using surveys of parents with infants (N = 945). We found that most parents sing to their infant on a daily basis and the frequency of infant-directed singing is unrelated to parents' income or ethnicity. Two reliable individual differences emerged, however: (i) fathers sing less than mothers and (ii) as infants grow older, parents sing less. Moreover, the latter effect of child age was specific to singing and was not reflected in reports of the frequency of playing recorded music. Last, we meta-analysed reports of the frequency of infant-directed singing and found little change in its frequency over the past 30 years, despite substantial changes in the technological environment in the home. These findings, consistent with theories of the psychological functions of music, in general, and infant-directed singing, in particular, demonstrate the everyday nature of music in infancy. This article is part of the theme issue 'Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part I)'.

Keywords: infancy; music; parenting; sex differences; universality.

Figure 1.

Frequency of parental singing and recorded music. Across the pooled sample (a) and each of the three cohorts (b), a majority of parents reported singing and playing recorded music on a daily basis and singing more frequently than playing recorded music. (Online version in colour.)

Figure 2.

Relations between child age, parent sex and parental music behaviours. The figure depicts estimates of the likelihood that parents will sing or play recorded music daily, from the logistic regression, across (a) levels of child ages or (b) parent sex. The vertical lines represent 95% confidence intervals. (Online version in colour.)

Figure 3.

Frequency of maternal song over the past 30 years. Despite the many changes in the technological environment in the home between the 1990s and the present, mothers' reported singing frequency did not show any downward trend over the past 30 years. (Online version in colour.)