Brave is a dress: Understanding “good” adults and “bad” children through adult horror and children’s play

Abstract

This article presents analyses from an ethnographic study of a rural preschool and the pretend play occurring there. While many studies in childhood have sought to understand children's play from the perspective of the child player, these analyses focus on understanding adult constructions through the children's play. By focusing on children's pretend play and adult reactions to it, this article seeks to explore children's play as a lens for understanding the tensions between social constructions of "good" adults and "proper" children.

On Belonging: Children Respond to Trump through Play and Imagination

“…When children are faced with a tension in their social order, or an upsetting event that they need to process, they turn to play as a way to work through problems and imagine new possibilities for themselves. We view play as a form of improvised storytelling, in which children develop characters, take on identities and roles, and experiment with multiple storylines and endings (Galman, 2017;Paley, 1984;Wohlwend, 2012Wohlwend, , 2009). Children's play includes both recurring and improvised elements that allow them to create imaginary worlds in which "new metaphors, new forms of social relations, and new patterns of power and desire are explored" (Davies, 2003, p. 167).…”