The Wild Ones (continued)

In 1955, the history of children's play crossed a major watershed. That year, ABC began broadcasting The Mickey Mouse Club, the first daily TV program produced exclusively for children and featuring all-child (except one) performers. More importantly, one of the show's sponsors, the Mattel Toy Company, began marketing toys not just around Christmas, but every day of the year. Daily commercials helped Mattel sales exceed all expectations and ushered in a new era of playing with things rather than playing with others.

Yet studies showed that when kids received a commercial toy, usually they'd play with it for only a short while. Before long, they'd rebel against these toys by creating their own styles of amusement. They invented their own rules for a board game, took miniature people out of a doll house or action game and put them into toy vehicles, or climbed up instead of gliding down a playground slide. These subversions—subversions that continue today—gave children at least some measure of control over their play in an environment overseen by nearby adults and distant marketers.

Childhood will always consist of secret, seemingly trivial diversions. "When we were kids, we had the sense to keep these things to ourselves," writes humorist Robert Paul Smith. "We didn't go around asking grownups questions about them. They obviously didn't know." Perhaps Smith is being overly sentimental, but his insight, just like that of William Dean Howells a century earlier, invokes something often overlooked about pre-adolescent childhood. In our contemporary society, where parents and other anxious adults agonize over how to keep children safe and entertained, we need to learn from the past that youngsters crave and deserve a chance to enjoy being young. Play, not work, will always remain the essence of childhood.

Howard P. Chudacoff, Ph.D., is the George L. Littlefield Professor of American History and a professor of urban studies at Brown University. Material for this article has been drawn from his book, Children at Play: An American History (NYU Press). A longer version of this essay can be found here.

Copyright UC Regents. Reprinted with permission from Greater Good magazine, Volume IV, Issue 4 (Spri>www.greatergoodmag.org.