Over the past half century, in the United States and other developed nations, children's free play with other children has declined sharply. Over the same period, anxiety, depression, suicide, feelings of helplessness, and narcissism have increased sharply in children, adolescents, and young adults. This article documents these historical changes…

Many research findings about animal play apply to children's play, revealing structural and functional similarities with mammals in general and primates in particular. After an introduction to life-history theory, and before turning to humans, the author reviews research about the two mammals in which play has been studied the most extensively:…

The authors review several case studies of children engaged in rule-governed play and conclude that the process of learning rules--and of breaking them and making new ones--promotes what they call gamesmanship. They link the development of gamesmanship to the theory of Machiavellian intelligence, which considers social interaction primary in the…

From an evolutionary perspective, the normal social play of children involves kids of various ages. Our human and great-ape ancestors most likely lived in small groups with low birth rates, which made play with others of nearly the same age rare. Consequently, the evolutionary functions of children's social play are best understood by examining…

Creating play environments for children usually requires groups of adults working together. An extensive scientific literature describes how groups function to achieve shared goals in general terms, and groups attempting to empower play may find this literature useful. Design principles for managing natural resources, identified by Elinor Ostrom…

This article describes the thinking behind and the implementation of the Design Your Own Park (DYOP) Competition, a collaborative project of a university, a city, and a fund-raising organization to empower neighborhoods and restore outdoor play citywide in Binghamton, New York. The city makes vacant lots and other neglected spaces available for…

Howard Gardner first posited a list of "multiple intelligences" as a liberating alternative to the assumptions underlying traditional IQ testing in his widely read study "Frames of Mind" (1983). Play has appeared only in passing in Gardner's thinking about intelligence, however, even though play instructs and trains the verbal, interpersonal,…

Few studies of adult playfulness exist, but limited research on older adults and playfulness suggests that playfulness in later life improves cognitive, emotional, social, and psychological functioning and healthy aging overall. Older adults represent a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population, underscoring the need to understand the aging…

Many early developmental theorists such as Freud, Erikson, Piaget, and Vygotsky suggested that play--which the authors of this article define as both playful activity and playful thought--had the power to influence the moral emotions, behaviors, and reasoning of children. More recent researchers have also found evidence of moral development in…

As many cultural groups in Western societies have become disaffected with mainstream sports cultures and their logics of practice, sociologists of sport and physical culture have turned their attention to the existential benefits of play and games. There is growing interest in revisiting and exploring the classic theories of play in society,…

For most children in North America, Halloween is one of the most exciting holidays of the year. But some critics insist that its emphasis on ready-made costumes, store-bought candy, and trick-or-treating seduces children into cultural passivity and socializes them to mindless consumption. These critics argue that trick-or-treating was an inherited…

Twentieth-century Russian literary critic and semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin developed an emology that linked carnival, authority, and laughter. Drawing on his work, the author investigates hidden parent-child interactions and children's discourse in early-childhood play. She argues that Bakhtin's ideas of carnival and its discourses apply to young…

A growing body of research has focused on the role of play in young children's literacy development and early-literacy learning. In reviewing this research, the authors define the play-literacy nexus as that space where play, language, and emerging literacy behaviors converge and interact. They describe findings about the play-literacy nexus…

Seeking to understand play as part of a more general theory of human relationships, the author defines play as one of four fundamental categories of behavior, the others being work, ritual, and communitas. He discusses how each of these behaviors is organized as a "pathway" that offers distinctive opportunities for experiencing life and for…