Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 116

112

Popular Culture Review

cycles. One boy in particular will serve as an unfortunate example.
He loved to stay at our house because we had hot meals and so many
new objects and activities. But we would find him at all hours of the
night up engaged in some type of play, or rummaging in the
refrigerator for food. At first we thought he was ill. Yet he seemed
to think that everything was normal in this pattern of alternating
sleep with play and eating. Now that Generation X has entered
college, one sees these same habits in students who suddenly get up to
stretch, look out the window, or leave the room as if the teacher is
merely a background TV lecture against which to enact the business of
living.
While in popular belief children's play may be seen as
"natural" in its extent, form and content, research over the past
several decades has demonstrated the interrelationship of play and
the totality of its context. Children may play anywhere, but they
will do so differently according to circumstances, and may play more
rarely when under stress, whether that stress refers to time pressure
or to conditions of extreme poverty, fear, uncertainty, or abuse. The
study of play in different societies reveals both common themes and
cultural variation.
Recent decades of behavioral science research in the United
States have focused particularly on the value of play in training the
young for adult life. Child's play is often viewed as a serious
collection of activities that involve Iwth safety issues and inculcation
of social values (Westland and Knight 1982, 2). Every year around
Christmastime, popular magazines and television shows suggest toys
for parents to buy for their children. The U.S. Consumer Product
Safety Commission in Washington, D.C. publishes a Consumer's
Guide for selecting suitable toys called Which Toy for Which Child?
Children's play differs in the presence of adults compared to
the forms it takes during their absence. Adult-structured play has
been more thoroughly studied (for example in laboratories, schools,
playgrounds) than child-structured play (Schwartzman 1983, 209210). Even when using the formal rules In adult structured play,
children may redefine or reinterpret these rules when adults are not
present. Elsewhere the role of play in stimulating creativity has
been explored by the senior author (see Read-Martin and also
Martin). Here the focus is on the analysis of play activities as they
reflect and create social norms, cultural values and personal