It was hypothesized that parents differing along a concreteness-abstractness dimension of conceptual development, as defined by the model of Harvey, Hunt, and Schroder, would differ in their attitudes and practices regarding the playfulness of their children's home play environment. It was also hypothesized that these parental differences would be systematically related to differences among the children in potential creativity. Parents' attitudes and their reported conditions of play in the home were determined by giving questionnaires to the parents. Potential creativity of the 3- and 4-year-old children was measured by indicators of complexity and variety of performance on a laboratory play task. The data for fathers showed no significant results. The results for mothers supported the hypotheses, in that conceptually abstract mothers were more likely than concrete mothers to enhance the playfulness of the home play environment, and the children of more abstract mothers showed evidence of greater creative potential on the performance task. These results were unrelated to differences among parents on certain demographic variables—age, income, education, and occupational prestige. The results were discussed in terms of the roles of parental conceptual systems and the home play environment in affecting the child's repertoire of potential responses and his motivation to respond to novelty