{"id":41221,"date":"2011-11-04T11:40:11","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T16:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/familyinequality.wordpress.com\/?p=3445"},"modified":"2012-01-08T15:13:10","modified_gmt":"2012-01-08T20:13:10","slug":"play-supervision-and-pressured-parenting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/11\/04\/play-supervision-and-pressured-parenting\/","title":{"rendered":"Play, Supervision, and Pressured Parenting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Family Inequality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Americans about my age<\/a> and older all seem to have stories about how we survived our school playgrounds without today\u2019s\u00a0cushy\u00a0soft surfaces, safety-oriented climbing structures, and running water.<\/p>\n

Here is a picture of the playground at my elementary school. I myself survived a fall off one of those seesaws onto the broken-glass-strewn asphalt, with nothing but a scrape to show for it (attended to by the school secretary \u2014 there was no \u201cschool nurse\u201d back then either).
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nIn the safety craze in recent decades<\/a>, sadly, real seesaws were one of the first things to go.<\/p>\n

Go back another few generations, and you\u2019ll find stories like this \u2014 about 200 children<\/em> killed in the streets of New York in 1910 (from the NYT Jan. 1, 1911):
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nMost of those kids weren\u2019t in cars or wagons; they were playing in the streets, doing work for their families, or just wandering around unattended \u2014 there were no public playgrounds.\u00a0In contrast, in 2009 there were about\u00a010 pedestrian or cycling children<\/a> killed by vehicles in New York City. Ah, the good old days.*<\/p>\n

Nowadays<\/strong><\/p>\n

As things have gotten safer for America\u2019s children, of course, parents have become ever more concerned with their safety, as\u00a0well as with their learning and development. Somewhere in America on a Sunday a few weeks ago, in an affluent community, a public playground was bubbling with activity. Every child seemed to be enjoying a rollicking good time on the latest safety-designed play equipment, cushioned by a luxuriously deep bed of mulch.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Also, each child seemed to be within a few feet of a parent or other adult caretaker \u2014 coaching, encouraging, spotting, supervising.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In recent years, concern about the physical fitness of children has increased, especially among poor children. Some researchers have asked whether the proximity of safe neighborhood playgrounds is one cause of the social class disparity in obesity rates. That would make sense because obesity rates are lower among children who play outdoors<\/a>. But the relationship between social class and playing outdoors is not clear at all<\/a>. Rich children have more access to some kinds of facilities, but poor children have more free time \u2014 and, where there is public housing, it usually includes playgrounds, like this one photographed in the 1960s:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In Annette Lareau\u2019s analysis of family life and social class, Unequal Childhoods<\/a><\/em>, children of middle class and richer parents spend more time in organized activities, and poorer kids spend more time in unstructured time (including play and TV). But as these pictures show, there\u2019s play and there\u2019s play. Are middle class parents hovering more than poorer parents do, and with what effect?<\/p>\n

Consider a\u00a0recent article<\/a> by Myron Floyd and colleagues (covered here<\/a>), which attempted to assess the level of physical activity among children in public parks by observing 2,700 children in 20 public parks in Durham, NC:<\/p>\n

[The] presence of parental supervision was the strongest negative correlate of children\u2019s activity… the presence of adults appears to inadvertently suppress park-based physical activity in the current study, particularly among younger children… This result should be used to encourage park designers to create play environments conducive to feelings of safety and security that would encourage rather than discourage active park use among children. For example, blending natural landscapes, manufactured play structures, and fencing in close intimate settings can be used to create comfortable environments for children and families. Such design strategies could encourage parents to allow their children to freely explore their surroundings, providing more opportunities for physical activity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interestingly, park in the pictured above has a fence around it so that parents can hang around at a distance with little fear for their children.<\/p>\n

Under social pressure<\/strong><\/p>\n

In\u00a0Under Pressure<\/a><\/em>, one of many books bemoaning the excesses of over-parenting, Carl\u00a0Honor\u00e9 wrote:<\/p>\n

Even when we poke fun at overzealous parenting… part of us wonders, What if they\u2019re right? What if I\u2019m letting my children down by not parenting harder? Racked by guilt and terrified of doing the wrong thing, we end up copying the alpha parent in the playground.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The point is not just that some parents have overzealous supervisory ambitions, driven by unequal\u00a0investments in children<\/a> and a threateningly competitive future. I think there is a supervision ratchet that feeds on the interaction between parents. In an article called \u201cPlayground Panopticism<\/a>,\u201d Holly Blackford summarized her observations:<\/p>\n

The mothers in the ring of park benches symbolize the suggestion of surveillance, which Foucault describes as the technology of disciplinary power under liberal ideals of governance. However,\u00a0the panoptic force of the mothers around the suburban playground becomes a community that gazes at the children only to ultimately gaze at one another, seeing reflected in the children the parenting abilities of one another.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This plays out in everyday interaction, whether one wants to engage it or not. If everyone else\u2019s kid is closely supervised while yours is running around bonkers on her own, what is a parent to do? If the other parents insist that their kids not go \u201cup the slide\u201d and yours just scrambles past them, you feel the pressure. (You also put the other parent in the position of violating another taboo \u2014 supervising someone else\u2019s child.) So it\u2019s not just fear of underparenting that drives parents to hover \u2014 it\u2019s also the cross-parent interactions.\u00a0These are the moments when contagious parenting behavior spreads.<\/p>\n

—————————<\/p>\n

*I started looking at this after reading about it in Viviana Zelizer\u2019s\u00a0Pricing the Priceless Child<\/a><\/em>, in which she writes, \u201cThe case of children\u2019s accidental death provides empirical evidence of the new meanings of child life in twentieth-century America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reminder: This blog post does not constitute research, but rather commentary, observation and recommendations for reading and discussion. The description of my childhood playground, and of one recent afternoon at one park, are anecdotes, something that stimulates reflection on wider issues, not empirical evidence or data.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s play and there’s play.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[244,223,233,252,253,272,304],"class_list":["post-41221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fat","tag-childrenyouth","tag-death","tag-healthmedicine","tag-history","tag-marriagefamily","tag-the-state"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41221"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41411,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41221\/revisions\/41411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}