#68. The Culture of Childhood: We’ve Almost Destroyed It

Children learn the most valuable lessons with other children, away from adults.

Roman Children Playing. Marie-Lan Nguyen. CC

Dear friends,

Part of Mother Nature’s program for children’s development is a strong drive, planted in children’s brains, to spend lots of time with other children, away from adults. Children everywhere are drawn to other children. They pay attention to other children, try to fit in with them, and strive to do what the others do and know what they know. Throughout most of human history, that drive has played a huge role in children’s education. In settings where adults don’t segregate children by age, children are attracted to others over a broad range of ages. In mixed-age groups, younger children acquire skills and advanced ways of thinking through interactions with older ones, and older children practice leadership and nurturing skills through interactions with younger ones (for more on this, see Letters #10 and #11).

I first became interested in the developmental value of children’s natural mixed-age interactions when a graduate student of mine and I conducted an observational study at a democratic school where students, from age 4 through late teenage years, are free to interact with one another throughout each school day regardless of age. We saw and documented many benefits of such interactions (Gray & Feldman, 2004). Subsequently, I conducted a survey of anthropologists who had lived in and studied hunter-gatherer societies and found that children in those societies spent most of every day playing and exploring with other children, in mixed-age groups, largely away from adults, and that the adults seemed to understand that this is how children become educated (Gray, 2012).

Anthropologists who have studied children in other types of traditional cultures have also written about children’s involvement in mixed-age groups as a primary means of their socialization and education (e.g. Lancy et al, 2010; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989). In a discussion of such research, one child development specialist (Judith Harris) noted that the popular phrase “It takes a village to raise a child” is true if interpreted differently from the usual Western interpretation. In her words: “The reason it takes a village is not because it requires a quorum of adults to nudge erring youngsters back onto the paths of righteousness. It takes a village because in a village there are always enough kids to form a play group” (Harris, 1989, p 161).

My own and my friends’ childhoods, in Minnesota and Wisconsin in the 1950s, were in many ways like that of children in traditional societies. We had school (which was not the big deal it is today) and chores, and some of us had part-time jobs, but still, most of our awake time was spent with other children away from adults. My family moved frequently, and in each village or city neighborhood to which we moved I found a somewhat different childhood culture, with different games, different traditions, somewhat different values, different ways of making friends.

Whenever we moved, my first big task was to figure out the culture of my new set of peers, so I could become part of it. I was by nature shy, which in one way was an advantage because I didn’t just blunder in and make a fool of myself. I observed, studied, practiced the skills that I saw to be important to my new peers, and then began cautiously to join the play and make friends. In the mid 20^th century, researchers described and documented many of the childhood cultures that could be found in neighborhoods in Europe and the United States (Corsaro & Eder, 1990; Opie & Opie, 1969). The culture of childhood, became, for a while, a topic of research pursued by anthropologists and sociologists.

Researchers interested in culture began to realize that in any given community there were at least two cultures, the adults’ and the children’s. The two, of course, were never completely independent of one another. They interacted and influenced one another; and as children grow up they gradually left the culture of childhood and entered the culture of adulthood. Children’s cultures can be understood, at least to some degree, as practice cultures, where children try out various ways of being and practice, modify, and build upon the skills and values of the adult culture. Sometimes they emulate the adult culture, sometimes they deliberately flout it, sometimes they mock it. In such behavior they are acting out ideas and reactions they have concerning their elders’ behavior. This is all part of Mother Nature’s way of helping them grow. They don’t just blindly follow the examples they see among adults. They evaluate the examples by playing them out in the culture of childhood.

A good illustration of this is found in anthropologist Collin Turbull’s description of children’s culture among Mbuti hunter-gatherers in the Congo region of Africa. He noted that wherever the band set up camp, the children would build a cluster of huts, modeled after the huts adults had built, far enough away from the main camp to be out of the adults’ range of sight and hearing. There they would sometimes playfully rehash and try to improve upon the debates and arguments they had heard among adults. Here are Turnbull’s words (1982, pp 142-143):

“It may start through imitation of a real dispute the children witnessed in the main camp, perhaps the night before. They all take roles and imitate the adults. It is almost a form of judgment for if the adults talked their way out of the dispute the children having performed their imitation once, are likely to drop it. If the children detect any room for improvement, however, they will explore that, and if the adult argument was inept and everyone went to sleep that night in a bad temper, then the children try and show that they can do better, and if they cannot, then they revert to ridicule which they play out until they are all rolling on the ground in near hysterics. That happens to be the way many of the most potentially violent and dangerous disputes are settled in adult life.”

Lessons Children Learn Better from Children than from Adults

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “I pay the schoolmaster, but ‘tis the schoolboys that educate my son.” He had a point. There are many valuable lessons that children can learn better from other children than from adults. Here are some of them.

Authentic communication

At least in modern Western cultures adults are often ridiculously condescending toward children and often dishonest. Consider for example, the adult who asks the three-year old, “What color is that?” while pointing to a red toy fire engine. This is not an honest question. Unless the adult is blind, the adult knows perfectly well what color it is. A child would never ask such a stupid question. Most of the questions that teachers ask during class time, through all the grades of school, are dishonest. The teachers know the answer (or think they do because they read it in the teachers’ edition of the textbook), so the question is not really a question. It’s a test.

Or consider the adult who says, “Oh, that’s beautiful, what a wonderful artist you are,” while looking at the child’s latest scribble. Children never give such false praise to one another unless they’re being sarcastic. Even as children grow older, adults tend to engage them in ways that suggest that either the adults or the children are idiots, and often their comments have more to do with trying to teach the children something, or control them in some way, than with genuine attempts to share ideas or really understand the child’s ideas.

Little children communicate with one another largely in the context of play, and the communications have real meaning. They negotiate about what and how to play. They discuss the rules. The talk about what is fair and not fair. In fantasy play they improvise speech appropriate to the characters they are playing. This is far better practice for future adult-adult communication than the kinds of “conversations” that children typically have with adults. A research study in which preschool children’s vocalizations were recorded in various settings revealed that their speech was far more sophisticated and meaningful when they were engaged in fantasy play among themselves than when they were involved in a teacher-led activity or sitting around a table eating (Fekonja et al., 2005).

As children get older, and especially once they are in their teen years, their communications with one another have ever more to do with the real emotions and struggles they experience in their lives. They can be honest with their friends, because their friends are not going to overreact and try to assume control, as their parents or other adults might. They want to talk about the issues important in their life, but they don’t want someone to use those issues as another excuse to subordinate them. They can generally trust their friends in ways they cannot trust their parents or teachers.

Independence and courage

The ultimate goal of childhood is to break away from dependence on parents and establish oneself as one’s own person. Already by the age of two—the terrible twos, when the favorite word is no—children are clearly on this path. By age four or a little later, most children want to get away from parents and other adults at least some of the time, so they can make their own decisions and interact with other children without unwanted interference.

As part of breaking away, children’s cultures often set themselves up as if in opposition to adult culture, often quite deliberately and adaptively. Even young children begin to use scatological, “naughty” words, deliberately flouting adults’ dictates. They delight in mocking adults and finding ways to violate rules. As one example, when schools began making rules against carrying even harmless toy weapons into school, some children started to bring tiny toy guns and plastic knives to school in their pockets and surreptitiously showed them to one another, proud to have violated a senseless adult-imposed rule (Corsaso & Eder, 1990).

Part of gaining independence is gaining courage—courage to face the challenges and emergencies that are part of every life. In their play groups, away from adults, children everywhere play in ways that adults might see as dangerous and might prevent (see Letter #8). They play with sharp knives and fire, climb trees and dare one another to go higher. Little children, in fantasy play, imagine themselves dealing with trolls, witches, dragons, wolves, and other kinds of predators and murderers. In all such play, children are learning how to manage fear, a crucial skill for anyone who intends to stay alive and well in the face of the real-life dangers that confront everyone at some points in their lives. Children also sometimes get mad at one another in their play and, without adult interference, learn how to deal with anger in ways that do not destroy the friendship.

In play amongst themselves, children must create their own activities and solve their own problems rather than rely on a powerful authority figure to do these for them. This is one of the great values of playing away from adults. In such play they must, as it were, be the adults, precisely because there are no adults present. Play is the practice space for adulthood. Adults spoil this large purpose of play when they intervene and try to be helpful.

Creating and understanding the purpose of rules

A fundamental difference between adults’ games and children’s is that adults generally abide by fixed, pre-established rules, whereas children generally see rules as modifiable. When adults play baseball, or Scrabble, or almost anything, they follow or try to follow the “official” rules of the game. In contrast, when children play, they frequently make up the rules or modify them as they go along (Youniss, 1994). This is true even when they play games like baseball or Scrabble, if there is no adult present to enforce the official rules (for a fun example of this regarding Scrabble, see my essay here). This is one of the ways in which children’s play is usually more creative than adults’ play. Children’s social play away from adults fosters creativity in ways that rarely happen when adults are involved.

The famous developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1932) noted long ago that children develop a more sophisticated and useful understanding of rules when they play with other children than when they play with adults. With adults, they get the impression that rules are fixed, that they come down from some high authority and cannot be changed. But when children play just with one another, because of the greater equality in their relationship, they feel free to challenge one another’s ideas about the rules, which often leads to negotiation and change in rules. They learn in this this way that rules are not fixed by heaven but are human contrivances to make life more fair and fun and can be altered when they don’t serve those ends. This important lesson is a cornerstone of democracy.

Building on the skills and values of the adult culture

Even while differentiating themselves from the adult culture, children import features of that culture into theirs. Children regularly incorporate into their play activities and values they observe among adults. This is why children in hunter-gather cultures play at hunting and gathering, why children in farming cultures play at farming, and why children in our culture play with computers. It is also why hunter-gatherer children do not play competitive games (the adults in their culture eschew competition), while children in our society do play competitive games (though not to the degree that they do when adults are involved).

Children don’t just mimic, in play, what they observe among adults. Rather, they interpret what they observe, try out variations of it, and thereby strive to make sense of it. Children’s play is always creative. In play they experiment with new, creative variations of themes derived from adults. This is how each new generation builds upon, rather than simply replicates, the culture of their parents’ generation.

Children are naturally drawn to the newest innovations in the world where they are growing. Adults are often suspicious of such innovations, but children embrace them. We see that, today, in children’s eagerness to learn how to use the latest computer technology. They are often ahead of their parents on this. Children’s culture focuses, quite naturally and adaptively, on the skills important to the world they are growing into, not the world as it was when their parents were growing up. Adults in every generation seem to bemoan the fact that their children don’t play the way they played when they were kids (see Letter #62). That’s one more reason why children strive to get away from adults when they play.

Getting along with others as equals

The main difference between adults and children that affects their interaction has to do with power. Adults, because of their greater size, strength, status, experience in the world, and control of resources have power over children. So, children’s interactions with adults are generally unbalanced, across a large power gap. If children are going to grow up to be effective adults, they must learn to get along with others as equals. For the most part, they can only practice that with other children, not with adults.

A major function of the culture of childhood is to teach children how to get along with peers without intervention by a powerful outside authority. Children practice that constantly in social play. To play with another person, you must pay attention to the other person’s needs, not just your own, or the other person will quit. You must overcome narcissism. You must learn to share. You must learn to negotiate in ways that respect the other person’s ideas, not just yours. You must learn how to assert your needs and desires while at the same time understanding and trying to meet the needs and desires of your playmate. This may be the most important of all skills that human beings must learn for a successful life. Without this ability it is not possible to have a happy marriage, true friends, or cooperative work partners.

The need to learn how to deal with others on an equal footing is the primary value of growing up in a culture of childhood. It underlies all the rest of what children learn best with peers. The reason why children’s communications with other children are more authentic than those with adults, why they can practice independence and courage with other children better than with adults, why they can learn about the modifiability of rules with other children better than with adults, and why they can more freely practice adult skills with other children than they can with adults is that their relationships with other children are relationships of equality rather than of dominance and subordination.

We’ve Almost Destroyed It

I used the present tense in much of what I wrote, above, but sadly, the past tense might have been more appropriate. Over the past few decades, by restricting children’s independent activities (through societal changes described in Letter D4), we have almost destroyed the culture of childhood. For reasons described in my relatively recent article in the Journal of Pediatrics, I am convinced that this destruction is the primary reason why we have seen such a large increase in anxiety, depression, and even suicide among kids over the past 60 years. Today we see increasing numbers of young people growing up not really knowing how to be adults, because they had little chance to practice it as kids.

There is, however, one saving grace, one reason why we adults have not completely crushed the culture of childhood. That’s the Internet. We’ve created a world in which children are largely prevented from congregating in physical space without an adult, but children have found another way. They get together on the Internet. They play games and communicate over the Internet. They create their own rules and culture and ways of being with others over the Internet. They mock adults and flout adult rules over the Internet. They, especially teenagers, share thoughts and feelings with friends through texting and social media, and they stay several steps ahead of their parents and other adults in finding new ways to maintain their privacy in all of this. No surprise, now we see adults trying to take that freedom away from kids (see Letter #45).

Further Thoughts

You might wonder: What is the evidence that kids are benefitting from the Internet in the ways I’ve described? Indeed, there is lots of evidence, some of which I described in Letters D3 and D7, but I plan to add to that with more evidence in one or more future letters.

And now, what do you think about all this? This Substack is, in part, a forum for discussion. Your thoughts and questions are valued and treated respectfully by me and other readers, regardless of the degree to which we agree or disagree. Readers’ thoughtful comments and questions add to the value of these letters for everyone.

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With respect and best wishes,

Peter

References

Corsaro, W. A., & Eder, D. (1990). Children’s peer cultures. Annual Reviews of Sociology, 16, 197-200.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. (1989). Human ethology. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.

Harris, J. R. (1998). The nurture assumption: Why children turn out the way they do. New York: Free Press.

Lancy, D. F., Bock, J., & Gaskins, S. (2010). The anthropology of learning in childhood. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.

Opie, I., & Opie, P. (1984). Children’s games in street and playground. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Piaget, J. (1932, 1965). The moral judgment of the child. New York: Free Press.

Turnbull, C. M. (1982). The ritualization of potential conflict between the sexes among the Mbuti. In E. G. Leacock & R. B. Lee (Eds.), Politics and history in band societies, 133-155. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Youniss, J. (1994). Children’s friendships and peer culture: Implications for theories of networks and support. In F. Nestmann & K. Hurrelmann (Eds.), Social networks and social support in childhood and adolescence, 75088. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.

Note: This letter is a revised version of an essay, with the same title, I published several yeas ago on my Psychology Today blog.