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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Explaining Play’s Functions and Its Development
Functions of Play
Development of Play
Support for Play’s Development
Kinds of Play Theories
Psychoanalytic Theory and Play
Cognitive-Developmental Theory and Play
Cultural-Ecological Theory and Play
Evolutionary and Comparative Theories and Play
Major Groupings and Play: Gender, Socioeconomic Status, and Disability
Gender
Socioeconomic Status
Disability
Bad Play
Types of Bad Play
Ambiguous Play
Summary
In a book on children’s play, it seems permissible, even appropriate, to begin with an invitation to pretend. We might pretend that play has no adaptive value, no value for preparing children for anything except more play. We might also pretend that children’s play is much more similar to adult recreation than is generally admitted. We might pretend that play is really best considered a mixture of good and bad, rather than an unequivocally good thing. Last, we might pretend that play is not a thing at all but rather an indefinable and hence immeasurable non-thing, and therefore nearly impossible to study scientifically.
Having engaged in this bit of playful pretending, you might feel there is something seriously real in what has just been said. You might feel that play may not have adaptive value, that play is very much like adult recreation, that there is indeed bad as well as good play, and that it may be impossible to pin down play scientifically.
What we have shown by this game of pretending is that when we talk about play, it often becomes something it is not, an unequivocally good thing that mostly children do. That is, when we talk about play as a thing, we often idealize play and make it be what we wish it to be, not what it is in reality.
However, when we actually play, even when we play at explaining play, we notice that something freeing and refreshing happens. The grains of truth in our playing are interesting and important, but by playing with them and not taking them too seriously, we open ourselves to the process of knowing. We focus less on wrapping everything up in a neat conclusion and more on enjoying the process itself.
Play, then, is more aptly defined as playing. It is a verb more than it is a noun. As a verb, playing is something one experiences and makes happen. It need not be looked for in any particular place, at any particular time, or in any particular group. At any place, at any time, or in any group, playing may break out, even when it is least expected. And in those places, times, and groups designated for play, something quite different from play may occur.
Even when children are clearly playing, they often seem to go in and out of play. A nice example of this ephemeral nature of play occurs when children build or construct with blocks, Legos, or some other construction material. As George Forman (1998) has pointed out, as long as the experience of building has a “What if . . . ?” attitude, it is constructive play, but as soon as it shifts to a “Why won’t it do that?” attitude, then it is more like work. In Forman’s words, “the playful child is content to change what he or she does, just to see what it yields. The task-oriented child is determined to achieve a particular goal” (p. 394).
There is, then, a great deal of difficulty in defining play and determining when play happens. What should we do in the face of this ambiguity? The ambiguousness of the concept does not mean we cannot study and understand play. Many important concepts are equally if not more ambiguous, such as the concepts of love, feeling, and religion. Each of these ideas has resisted exact definition, and yet each remains indispensable for understanding the human condition.
One response to ambiguity is to develop criteria for deciding what is and is not play, with no one criterion being sufficient (Smith, 1985). But which criteria? Some suggested criteria have turned out to be useless, such as that play is intrinsically motivated (Smith, 1985). Others, such as that play produces positive affect or that it is flexible, voluntary, egalitarian, and (typically) nonliteral (i.e., based on pretense), have been found to work much of the time but not all of the time (Sutton-Smith, 1984). We need, then, to consider multiple criteria for defining play rather than settling on one definition.
Sometimes researchers define play as what children see as play. Using this definition, we learn that, for children, play is about having fun, being outdoors, being with friends, choosing freely, not working, pretending, enacting fantasy and drama, and playing games. Furthermore, we learn that it is not about preparing for the future (Sutton-Smith, 1997).
Defining play according to what children see as play will be a main criterion used throughout this book. For this reason, we have included in our discussion phenomena that major scholars have sometimes treated as nonplay, such as humor, organized sports, and academic games. Our argument is that if play is the experience of playing, then we should not rule out these borderline activities that children see as play. We will therefore strike a balance between offering a precise but false definition of play and accepting almost anything enjoyable as play. In doing so, we will err on the side of being inclusive. We will let description and a flexible collection of criteria carry the burden of defining play.
But even with the best collection of criteria, it will always be difficult, perhaps impossible, to pin down play, which means that any theory of play cannot be a theory of some thing, some clearly bounded unit of behavior that is easily defined. With play and playing there is always ambiguity, which is why the great play theorist, Brian Sutton-Smith, has preferred that we speak of play rhetorics rather than of play theories (Sutton-Smith, 1997).
EXPLAINING PLAY’S FUNCTIONS AND ITS DEVELOPMENT
Rhetorics are patterns of talk designed to persuade. They exist because, in the absence of sufficient data and clear definitions, we still need to understand, evaluate, and decide whether to support children’s play. There is, then, nothing irrational about engaging in rhetoric. However, there are pitfalls when we take our rhetorics too seriously, when we forget that they are rhetorics, not well-grounded theories.
Functions of Play
Sutton-Smith suggests that there are several rhetorics of children’s play, each emphasizing some presumed general function. One in particular stands out: what Sutton-Smith calls the rhetoric of progress (Sutton-Smith, 1997). This is talk about play as being good for children’s physical, emotional, cognitive, and social development. It is talk about play preparing children for the future.
In recent decades, the rhetoric of progress has been the dominant rhetoric among scholars as well as among parents, teachers, and ordinary people in industrialized cultures such as our own. As one reviewer recently put it,
children’s . . . play has been hypothesized to contribute to the cognitive, motor, and social development of children, including the development of perception, attention, memory, problem-solving skill, language, communication, creativity, logical operations, emotion regulation, self-regulation, social skills, gender roles, social relationships, conflict resolution, coping with stress, and so on. (Power, 2000)
The rhetoric of progress makes good intuitive sense, which is why we adopt it throughout this book, and why it shows up not simply in older research but in the most up-to-date discussions on children’s play (Harris, 2003; McCune, 1993). However, researchers disagree over whether there is solid evidence to support this rhetoric of progress. For example, after reviewing the literature on play’s functions, Martin and Caro (1985) concluded, “At present, there is no direct evidence that play has any important benefits, with the possible exception of some immediate effects on children’s behavior” (p. 97). In seeming contrast, Fein and Kinney (1994) concluded that
children who spontaneously engage in [make-believe play], when compared to their less playful peers, tend to be more friendly, popular, expressive, cooperative, verbal, and creative, less impulsive and aggressive, and more likely to take the perspective of others. . . . More impressive, kindergarteners’ participation in sociodramatic play predicts their social and social-cognitive maturity in first and second grades. (p. 189)
Fein and Kinney’s argument has to do with relatively short-term correlates of play, which is why their differences with Martin and Caro may be only apparent, not real. In sum, though the rhetoric of progress makes sense, both intuitively and perhaps for predicting short-term effects, it has yet to make the kind of tough-minded sense that comes with sufficient data and evidence about long-term effects.
Insufficient evidence for saying anything definite about play’s positive functions isn’t the only shortcoming of the rhetoric of progress. The rhetoric of progress can lead to serious problems. First, it can lead to the idealization of play, to overlooking its darker, harmful side—as we shall discuss shortly—so that we don’t prepare ourselves for times when we need to stop or prevent bad play. Second, this idealization can justify adults taking control of children’s play when they shouldn’t. Some people seem to feel that if play is essential for children’s future, it can’t be left to children to choose how to play.
Sutton-Smith is concerned with the way adults have more and more come to control children’s play. It should concern us as well, for, as Sutton-Smith (Smith, 1985) explains, “children need their play to make the present tolerable to themselves. We should defend that need and not intrude upon it for the protection of our own past values under the guise of preparing their future” (p. 146).
In the end, play need not be justified on the grounds that it prepares children for the future. It can be justified simply on the basis that it helps children thrive or at least survive in the present. But even this last statement is itself based on a rhetoric.
Development of Play...
