For all the attention given to problems of schooling and changes in the familythese days, the fate of childhood is greatly influenced by what happens with childrenwhen neither parents nor teachers are around. A child's use of free time may be thekey to his or her successful negotiation of childhood. It is in free time that childrenmake choices about their lives and act out their inclinations and their emerging values.

What free time should be for children is a very controversial subject, evoking extremes both in philosophies of human nature and the differing concerns of everydaylife. Many children are "at risk" these days, for a variety of reasons, and they are mostvulnerable when they are alone and unsupervised. Impoverished conditions at homemay make the temptations of the street irresistible. But economic circumstances are notthe only influences on the use of free time. Parents with money will buy childcare andafter school programming to keep their children occupied. Safety may be a primaryconcern, but a simple distrust of idleness leads to the same position: "Idle hands are thedevil's workshop." Somewhere in between are those parents who are able to keep theirchildren in the house by relying on television to "babysit" them through empty,unattended hours.

Responding to real and perceived dangers by occupying children in structuredprograms or by using TV as a surrogate parent may be shortsighted, if protective. Children must learn to make decisions about what is worth doing, what might beenjoyable, and what might lead to bigger and better things, the risks notwithstanding. With time and resources children will experiment with and transform reality in theinterest of mastery. This is the essence of play. Children can also learn to persist forsomething they want, to identify with ends that are worth an investment of time andenergy. This is the essence of work. These are precious and culturally usefulderivatives of self-directed activity. But what will bring such things about?

Play, in particular, is the special manifestation of freedom in childhood. It isquite common in modern societies to regard the existence of play in childhood as anindication that childhood is proceeding naturally and that, indeed, a child is evenworking on growing up as he or she plays the roles of parent, teacher, banker or any ofthe other manifestations of older and more powerful beings. If this isn't happening, or if it ishappening in ways that seem different from those of our own childhoods, we may be alarmed.

Research on play has established that it has benefits for cognitive, social, andemotional development. Children who are allowed to play with certain materials showevidence of higher creativity and problem solving ability on related tasks; childrenallowed to play frequently with others show higher levels of social competence; andgiving children an opportunity to play symbolically with upsetting situations enablesthem to cope more effectively. Sociologist Janet Lever of Northwestern Universityfound more complexity in the games of boys than girls in later childhood and saw thatas advantageous to their development of social and organizational skills. University ofIllinois play specialist Lynn Barnett found that preschool children anxious about thestart of school who were allowed a period of free play showed decreases in distresswhile those who listened to stories did not.

The value of play has not been lost on educators. Some have attempted toincorporate play into the curriculum, and through "play training" have even shown theability to increase a child's creativity and problem solving ability. But one can rightlyquestion the remaining character of play in such situations, when adults have most ofthe control over the situation. Promoting the values of play without killing the essenceof play brings us back to the question of structure.

A Modicum of Structure

Among children in the United States there are at present a large number who aredeprived of free time and an even larger group who are deprived of opportunity. Inthe former group are children whose time is almost entirely structured. Whether theresult of a concern about the perils of idleness or the identification of a pathway forachievement, parents of these children have some kind of activity or skill developmentprogram for every waking hour. In the other group are children, generally neglected,who have time, but little in the way of resources, human or material, to help shapepossibility and direction.

Some time ago, Yale psychologists Jerome and Dorothy Singer noted that:

"Parents often tend to over-organize the activities of their children, setting up too many lessons or definite tasks. From two and a half on, many children now attend school for at least part of the day, and day care centers and nurseries may keep them almost too busy. We need to strike a better balance between structuring children's activities and giving them a chance to play on their own."

We tend to associate leisure with adulthood, but children benefit from "breaks" at leastas much as adults. University of Georgia developmental psychologist AnthonyPelligrini's research with school recess demonstrates that children are better able toconcentrate after they have had a little time to let off some of the "steam" that builds upwith sitting at desks for long periods of time. Pelligrini also finds that extended recesstime, beyond some optimum, is likely to be counterproductive for subsequentclassroom attention. Any parent recognizes that tendency of children to take anyactivity to excess. But to deny children choice in the matter altogether would seem tobe inconsistent with teaching them to shape their own lives. If children do not haveleisure and time for their own purposes, playful and serious, when and how will theylearn these lessons?

For children with too little structure in their free time the problem isconsiderably different. These children may have the time and freedom for play andwork, but with few resources and opportunities available, an adaptive repertoire ofskills and interests is not likely to develop. Studies of play show the importance offreedom and spontaneity to divergent thinking, a critical component of creativity; butcreativity also requires a responsive environment to provide feedback about theappropriateness of various actions.

According to a study by Elliott Medrich and his associates at the University ofCalifornia Berkeley, children from lower socioeconomic conditions, especially urbanchildren, rarely have the availability of recreational options, in terms of people, placesand physical resources, that middle and upper SES children do. Opportunities todevelop leisure skills that facilitate self-directed activities remain inequitablydistributed in the population.

A Final Caveat

Child psychologist Brian Sutton-Smith of the University of Pennsylvaniacautions us not to "romanticize" play. Play is not always nice. The deviance to befound in much of children's play reminds us also of Freud's view of children aspolymorphously perverse. It is an argument to stay close with children and not let theplay get "out of hand" and even to create environments that offer constructivealternatives. That indeed is the history of the American Recreation Movement, ingiving turn-of-the-century-children something other than the streets in which to playand something to do as well. But it is the nature of play, after all, to challenge thepowers that be and to transform the reality that is given. That is what play offersadults as well as children. Children just do it better. Adults should be careful in tryingto facilitate play that they don't sanitize it and strip play of its real value to childhood -- that of giving a child some control over his or her destiny.

For further information, contact:

• Douglas Kleiber, Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, Hardman Hall, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. Phone (404) 542-5064; Fax: (404) 542-4377.

• Lynn Barnett-Morris, Department of Leisure Studies, 1206 S. Fourth Street, University ofIllinois, Champaign, IL 61820. Phone: (217) 333-4410; Fax: (217) 333-0404.

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