Children and Games
Robin Burke
GAM 206
Outline
o Quiz
o Game examination (15 min)
o Quiz (30 min)
o Children and Games
Games
o Games
o Checkered Game of Life
o The Game of Human Life
o The Game of Life (1960)
o The Game of Life (2000)
o Pick one and compare with
Checkered Game of Life
o focus on how each game starts
o how does life start?
o You can use notes about the
game
Quiz
o 30 minutes
Child
o What kind of category is this?
o biological
o but with cultural, social, legal
implications
o Many categories like this
o race
o sex
o Implications are always contingent
o different from place to place
o and time to time
o But rarely seen as such
Childhood
o Some points from the discussion
o Change in the conception of
childhood
o from little adults
o to special time of life
Children as Little Adults
o Many contributing factors
o Notion of original sin
o Calvinist idea of the importance of work
o Economic necessities of pre-industrial life
o Consequences
o Brief period of special status
o parental attention
o freedom from substantial duties
o Childish traits considered deficiencies
o Harsh punishment
o Schooling/apprenticeship focused on
career/life skills
o Considered a form of property
Extended Childhood
o Longer period of special status
o from 6 to 10 or 12
o Childhood traits considered valuable
o innocence
o freedom from adult vices
o Extended schooling
o aimed toward citizenship as well as
literacy
o emphasis on the development of moral
character
o Supported by products
o children's books
o manufactured toys
Extended Childhood, cont'd
o Continuous trend to the present day
o Extension in time
o currently late teens (early 20s?)
o Strong cultural emphasis on child
protection
o legal structures
o social conventions
o Huge segment of the economy
o children's clothes, music, books, toys,
etc.
o teen fashions, etc.
Why did this happen?
o Many factors
o Romantic ideas
o Rousseau wrote about the nobility and
innocence of children
o Industrialization / Urbanization
o Less home-based work to be done
o Children's income less important
o Greater need for educated / skilled
workers
o and emerging professions
o Smaller family size
o improved birth control
o lower child mortality
o more investment in each child
But
o This was an ideal
o available only to a minority of
children
o Requirements
o 2-parent family
o single wage-earner
o non-farm
o disposable income to buy toys,
books, etc
o parental literacy
Realities: Work
o Poorer families could not afford to do
without children's work
o children's labor accounted for 20% of
household income in the average family
o When manufacturing moved outside
the home
o children's work moved there, too
o In factories
o muscle power was less important
o children could be paid less
o In cities
o many menial tasks given to children
o errand boy, paper boy, messenger boy, etc.
Textiles
o Traditionally a home-based craft
o families around Philadelphia produced 230,000
yards of cloth in 1809
o children contributed
o especially girls
o Philadephia, 1820
o
o
o
o
39 factories
1100 textile workers
40% children
some as young as seven
o
o
o
o
o
10-12 hour days
6 day week
wage = $1 week
physical abuse and the job injuries common
poor working conditions
o Conditions
Reality: Rural America
o The extended childhood ideal was not
possible in rural areas
o The whole family labored on a farm
o Children
o
o
o
o
o
tended livestock
milked cows
planted, weeded, cultivated
churned butter
prepared and preserved food
o Schools
o not always available
o single-room schoolhouse
o teacher might not even have a high school
education
o often open only in winter
o since children could not be spared at other times
Reality: Domestic Life
o Stable two-parent marriages
relatively unusual
o Civil War
o resulted in many widows
o Maternal mortality
o resulted in many widowers
o Poverty
o caused parents (esp. single parents) to
place children in orphanages
o or to put them in domestic service
Children's Rights
o Not until 1874
o was a parent convicted of physically
abusing a child
o Mothers retained children after
divorce
o only if they had "good character"
o a similar test did not apply to fathers
o Adoption was not invented until after
the Civil War
o partly as a response to terrible conditions
in orphanages
Family Life
o In earlier periods
o family and extended-family units shared
work and non-work time
o Urbanization / Modernization
o divorced work from the home
o took fathers out of the home
o took children away to school
o Hence the origin of the "family game"
o games that parents would play with
children
o activities for times that parents could be
with children
Realizing the Ideal
o The "extended childhood" ideal
o was extremely successful
o Many of its tenets became
enshrined in public policy
o took over 100 years
o Examples
o Child labor laws
o Compulsory public education
through high school
o Child protection statutes
o"best interests of the child"
Child Labor Laws
o States began to act
o some banned employment of
children under 12 by 1850
o rarely enforced
o Factories turned to immigrants
o who would work for less
o less likely to organize
o less like to demand their legal
rights
Games and Morality
o 19th century US is a very religious country
o great ambivalence about games
o Non-productive activity
o "Idle hands are the devil's tools."
o Associated with gambling
o board games were associated with gambling
activities
o staking games
o very much condemned by church authorities
o many people considered dice inherently evil
o "the devil's bones"
o the teetotum
o cards were not much better
Games for Children
o Various acceptable genres
o Morality
o Game contains messages about right and wrong
o Examples
o Snakes and Ladders
o various "Games of Life"
o Education
o Game teaches facts
o Examples
o geography games
o "Authors" card game
o Later business / occupational games
o having children handle make-believe money was
controversial
Inscription
o Mansion of Bliss
o England, 1822
o "designed for the amusement of
youth, with a view to promote the
progressive improvement of the
juvenile mind and to deter them
from pursuing the dangerous paths
of vice."
Snakes and Ladders
Game Manufacturers
o Ives, 1843
o Milton Bradley, 1860
o McLoughlin Brothers, 1850
o Selchow, 1865
o Snow and Co., 1870
o Horseman, 1885
o Bliss, 1883
o Parker Bros., 1883
The End?
o Game sales and production slowed
o by 1900
o a number of companies went out of
business
o many bought by Parker Bros.
o Only three companies survived the
Depression
o Parker Bros.
o helped by Monopoly (1935)
o Milton Bradley
o Selchow and Righter
Television
o Introduced a new family activity
o cut game sales further
o Game makers produced spin-off
games
o Hopalong Cassidy (1950), Milton
Bradley
o Now this is the largest segment of
the game industry
o characterized by design retreads
oDogopoly
oSimpson's Game of Life
Wednesday
o Next unit
o Context
o Late 20th Century Japan
o Game
o Pokemon card game
o Readings