Bonding Development between Parents and Children through Playing Together to Improve Family Happiness

Introduction: This study aims to use the Indonesian translation of modified couple satisfaction index (CSI) tool to evaluate parental happiness scores at before and after participating playing together activities that was designed for bonding development between parents and children. Methods: By using a serial pre-post intervention experimental design, to assess a minimal of 263 couples of mothers and fathers having under five-year-old child at before after the intervention, and two weeks after. The intervention was playing activities in an interactive playground spent by parents and child for 1.5 - 2 hours that were located in Medan, Jakarta, Surabaya and Makassar. The validated CSI semi-structured questionnaire (by using Cronbach's alpha of 60% or more) was used to collect data to explore factors contributing to parents' happiness. A multiple measure analysis was used to analyse the parents happiness improvements. Results: The CSI tool was validated with the Cronbach's alpha of 0.87 and 0.84 for father and mother, respectively. This study could recruit a total of 370 couples, however only 282 couples completed all data collection. There are 11 items asked for parents' happiness, 3 items regarding to factors contributing to parents' happiness, and 6 items to assess parents' satisfaction. There are improvements in all items by proportions, and the total score of parents' feelings about their relationships are significantly increased by time (P<0.001). Conclusion: The quality of playing together between parents and child can increase family happiness at both short and longer-periods.