Story: Childhood
Page 2 – Play and recreation
Free play
Free play with little or no adult supervision was a common experience for children in the 19th and much of the 20th centuries. Families were large, which provided children with ready-made playmates. It was not practical for parents to attempt to oversee children constantly. A settler culture of self-reliance expected children to make and supervise their own fun.
Household chores, school and, for some, work commitments restricted leisure time. But the outdoors – places like native bush, waterways, farmland and later urban streets – provided children with good opportunities for play. Climbing trees, making huts, fishing and rafting were popular activities. Reading and board games were common indoor pastimes – reading in particular took children away from the adult world.
Natural wildernesses often concealed children’s activities from older people, but those who had to play in busy urban streets more frequently met with adult disapproval. Boisterous, noisy play could be interpreted as ‘larrikinism’ (anti-social behaviour). From the early 20th century urban children exchanged central city streets for suburban ones as families moved to the outskirts of towns.
Subtle surveillance
Natural environments did not always mean that children were free from parental attention. In his 1993 memoir, New Zealand historian Keith Sinclair recalled his 1930s Auckland childhood playing in the harbour and up trees with a friend called Dawn. The youthful Sinclair thought their activities (which involved pulling one another’s pants down) were concealed. Years later his sister told him their mother would say ‘Get one of the kids and go down to the back beach with Keith’1 which implied she had an idea of what they were up to.
Organised play
Children’s play became more regulated in the late 19th century, as general recreation was more organised. Unsupervised play was also thought to lead to delinquency. When school became compulsory in 1877 playtime was largely unsupervised, but it was later overseen by teachers. Most early schools had segregated boys’ and girls’ playgrounds. Physical education classes, sport and later military drills also controlled play activity at school.
Outside school, children’s picnics with organised games were common from the late 19th century on. Municipal playgrounds with slides and swings were established in most towns in the early 20th century. Quieter pursuits like scrapbooking, stamp and postcard collecting, and swapping items were popular. These had a commercial element to them – some items usually had to be bought. In the mid-20th century cinemas were a weekly source of entertainment for children. Children’s radio and later television shows were also popular.
Organised play supervised by adults did not mean that free play disappeared. The walk to and from school with siblings and friends was a time of freedom, and children continued to play away from adults (usually outside) in their spare time throughout the 20th century. The bush and beach remained popular recreational spots. Bicycles made children more mobile and enabled them to travel further from their home turf.
Sheltered children
In the late 20th century it became less common for children to roam outdoors alone or with friends. Busy roads and concerns about ‘stranger danger’ made parents feel uncomfortable letting their children play outside the home without supervision. Computer games and television kept some children indoors. But children were not necessarily lazier. They had more recreation options than in the past.
Vigorous activities with some element of risk like climbing trees became less common in schools and childcare centres in light of government-initiated health and safety policies. By the 2000s some parents and teachers reacted against this and allowed children to take more risks when playing.
Toys, games and rhymes
In the 19th and much of the 20th centuries most toys were home-made by children. Only children from prosperous families had bought toys. Cheap commercial toys were more common from the 1890s, though children continued to make their own.
Toilet humour
Children’s chants and rhymes were often based on very old songs which had travelled to New Zealand with British settlers. Others had more local origins. They were usually nonsense rhymes, and often scatalogical. One based on the national anthem ‘God defend New Zealand’ was a good example: ‘God of nations / Smell my feet / Sitting on the toilet seat / May your stinkies smell afar / God defend our noses.’2
Racing trolleys made from scavenged items were popular. Most boys had pocket knives and used them to make bows, pea-shooters and shanghais (catapults). Girls sometimes joined in, but also made their own toys, like dolls from clothespegs and paper. Schoolyard crazes included marbles, knucklebones, jacks, conkers, skipping ropes and hopscotch grids. Comics were eagerly read and swapped with friends. Mass-produced toys like hula hoops, Barbie dolls and Lego sets were popular from the 1950s. Toys based on television programmes and movies were common in the 2000s.
Left to their own devices, children initiated a range of games which often involved running and chasing, like tag and bulrush. Games such as cowboys and Indians were derived from American films popular in the mid-20th century.
Chants and rhymes were sometimes incorporated into games. The rhyme ‘Pokarekare ana / I had a squashed banana’ (based on a Māori love song) was a common playground refrain still heard in the 2000s.
