“All work and no play … ?” : a critical investigation of an emerging public health discourse on children’s play

In many industrialised societies a high value is attributed to children’s play, mainly because it is deemed an essential component of childhood development and due to the conviction that play contributes to children’s happiness and well-being. However, concerns have arisen about the changing patterns of, and declines in, children’s play, especially outdoors. These have largely been attributed to increasing perceptions of risk in outdoor play and to societal changes popularising more structured and organised activities. Recently, the concerns about declining play, the mounting preoccupation with children’s sedentary ‘lifestyles’, and the focus on childhood obesity prevention have converged in public health discourses, and public health organisations have begun to promote active play as a way to increase children’s physical activity. What appears to be emerging is a public health discourse on children’s play.  Through four articles, this thesis explores the emerging public health discourse on play and examines some of its potential effects. Article 1 is a position paper and provides a frame for the thesis findings. It presents the central argument of the research, outlines the emerging positions that public health organisations are taking on play and also discusses how these positions may be problematic for children’s play. The thesis then discursively examines how the notion of play is being taken up by public health. Article 2 addresses this uptake through a discursive analysis of 150 public health documents addressing children’s health, physical activity, obesity, leisure and play. This article examines what values and assumptions underlie the promotion of play for children’s physical health and analyses how play is being shaped, disciplined and normalised in the public health discourse. It shows that within the public health context, play is viewed as a productive health activity for children, and that pleasure is drawn on to promote physical activity. Furthermore, children also appear to be encouraged to self-govern their leisure time for it to be health promoting.  Concerned with how the public health discourse may be shaping the way children engage and construct their own meanings and experiences of play, this thesis also examined the photographic and narrative constructions of play among 25 children 7 to 11 years old. Children’s photographs and narratives about play were analysed in Article 3. Children in this study suggested that importantly, play for them was an end in itself; that it was primarily emotionally important, intrinsically motivated and purposeless. This runs through all of the findings of the article, which suggest that enjoyable play is both active and inactive, that some children have a sense of ambivalence regarding scheduled forms of play, and that risk is sometimes considered an especially pleasurable component of play. These findings point to a dissonance between the forms of play promoted in public health and the meanings attributed to play by children.   Drawing on the Foucault-inspired analytical concept of biopedagogies, the fourth article in this thesis places the two components of this study in dialogue (i.e., Canadian public health discourse on play and children’s constructions of play). The findings suggest that while the public health discourse around ‘active play’ is taken up and reproduced by some children, other children highlight sedentary play as important for social and emotional well-being. Indeed, while ‘active play’ is deemed a solution to the risk of obesity within the public health discourses, it also embodies contradictions regarding risk in play for children, which children appear to have to negotiate. This article suggests that the public health discourse appears to enable some representations of play (i.e., active) and obscure others (i.e., sedentary), and that this may be having the unintended consequence of reshaping and narrowing the meanings that children attribute to their own play.  This thesis does not aim to provide directions for how play ought to be better addressed in public health. Rather, drawing on the critical work of Michel Foucault, this thesis presents an analysis of the emerging public health discourse on play. This work underscores relevant areas upon which public health ought to further critically reflect, particularly with respect to research concerning children. Importantly, considering the possible effects of this discourse on children’s play, this thesis concludes by emphasising the contingency of the current perspectives on play.

Keyphrases: Critical public health, Children's play, Foucault, Discourse analysis, Sociology of childhood, Biopedagogies