OCR Document


 

CONTENTS 

From the Editor ............................................................................................ 3 

Boys Who Play Hopscotch: The Historical Divide 
of a Gender Space 
Derek Van Rheenan ...................................................................................... 5 

Childhood Narrated and Negotiated: Children's, Parents' and Teachers' 
Views on Childhood 
Bjørg Kjær .................................................................................................. 35 

Bedtime Stories 
JoAnn Conrad ............................................................................................. 43 

The State of Play: A Report on the Conference 
Julia C. Bishop ........................................................................................... 54 

Notes and Announcements ............ ..…….... ....................... ......... ............. 56 

Contributors ................................................................................................ 58 

On the Cover: Reproduction of the cover of W.W. Newell's Games and 
Songs of American Children. 

1 



 

FROM THE EDITOR... 

This volume of Children's Folklore Review is a bit behind schedule, and it 
is my fault. I had the galleys of a book come back in September, and the 
publisher wanted them back before I left for the American Folklore Society 
meetings on October 24th. So, I put off the final editing of CFR for a few 
weeks. This issue, however, is a nice follow-up to the anniversary volume. 

The volume leads off with Derek Van Rheenen's "Boys Who Play 
Hopscotch: The Historical Divide of a Gendered Space," an examination of 
a game now thought of as a girls' game which, historically, was also played 
by boys. Bjørg Kjær’s "Childhood Narrated and Negotiated; Children's, 
Parents' and Teachers' Views on Childhood" examines the ways in which 
the three groups named in the title present themselves and their positions in 
their stories about what they do. In "Bedtime Stories," JoAnn Conrad 
describes the bedtime interactions between a mother and her child, 
revealing a great deal about both participants. 

The volume also includes with Julia C. Bishop's "The State of Play: A 
Report on the Conference," a report on last year's conference at the 
University of Sheffield, England. 

Having produced the special twentieth-anniversary issue, we could not 
quite go back to the format we had had before, and so volume 21, number 1, 
returns to the twice-a-year schedule but retains some of the features that we 
liked about the special issue. We are keeping the upgraded paper of the 
cover and the interior, and we are changing the cover illustration-now a 
reproduction of the cover of W. W. Newell's Games and Songs of American 
Children. We hope that you like the way CFR is developing-and we urge you to 
send your articles on children's folklore to this journal. 

C.W. Sullivan III 

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BOYS WHO PLAY HOPSCOTCH:  
THE HISTORICAL DIVIDE OF A 

GENDERED SPACE 
Derek Van Rheenen 

As a child hops through a sketched diagram shaped like a cross, an airplane, 
a snail, careful not to tread on the forbidden lines, to enter the dragon's teeth, 
or step foot in hell, does the hopping participant contemplate what this mere 
amusement means? As the child strives to take ownership of his or her own 
space, ultimately attaining a place called sky blue, heaven, or paradise, what 
symbolic path has this child just traversed, what cultural meanings has he or 
she just produced? Am I reading too much between the lines to suggest that 
the modern game of hopscotch involves something more than mere 
amusement? 

As the social practice of hopscotch represents a singular form of 
recreation, I believe it worthwhile to ask what cultural systems of meaning 
are both re-created and created anew through such social activities. Do these 
chalked boundaries of space suggest a particular course of social action, 
even in a space seemingly divorced from adult authority? If childhood repre-
sents a context within which social trajectories are traced, some doors open 
and others closed, what might this mere amusement tell us about the 
possibilities and constraints of social mobility? Are certain social spaces 
more open to boys than to girls, or vice versa? Is the gender order being 
recreated within these mere amusements, or do traditional games offer the 
possibility of creating something innovative, even a new social order? As 
games represent dynamic social practice, then it is imperative that we situate 
these games within the context of social power and culture historically. 

To understand the multiple meanings attached to a social practice within 
contemporary culture, I believe it necessary to chronicle its particular 
historical development. By analyzing a social practice historically, it may be 
possible to surmise the developing relations of cultural production as groups 
and individuals construct meaning in their respective use of these practices. 
The traditional game of hopscotch can therefore be characterized as a social 
practice, a habitable text of cultural constraint 

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Van Rheenen 

and possibility.l Weaving a path of cultural production, participants negotiate 
meaning across lines of social and physical space.2 Once a game played 
predominantly by boys, hopscotch has undergone a historical transformation 
in both the sex of player participants, as well as in the subsequent cultural 
meanings attached to its gendered involvement. Thus, within the twentieth 
century, the socially constructed space of the hopscotch diagram has come to 
be marked as feminine, a cultural text inhabited primarily by preadolescent 
girls. Boys who play hopscotch today run the risk of being deemed 
effeminate, a stigmatized marking in a patriarchal society. 

This essay attempts to examine the cultural meanings of gender as 
played out in the historical transformation of this children's game. Initially, I 
will discuss the ways in which traditional games, and the study of these 
games, intersect the social construction of gender and gender socialization. 
As these games are commonly classified in terms of the sex of their 
participants, research has tended to highlight the apparent differences 
between girls and boys. These differences have generally supported the 
reigning gender order. By examining the traditional game of hopscotch, this 
essay attempts to illustrate how the simple lines of a children's game have 
served to separate boys from girls, institutionalizing the binary construction 
of gender and sexuality within the twentieth century. And yet, as a malleable 
text enacted in local contexts, the historical practice of hopscotch likewise 
highlights the polysemic possibilities of gender production and meaning. 

SEX DIFFERENCES AND GENDER SOCIALIZATION 

Children experience themselves as belonging to distinct and 
dichotomous gender identities. These gender identities are based upon 
cultural systems of belief which generalize, and in turn naturalize, the 
appearance, behaviors, and thoughts of each sex. Children's play is but one 
of several interrelated activities which informs the cultural production of 
gender. By addressing the informal play of children, it is possible to witness 
the ways in which these active agents of culture participate in their own 
construction of gender. 

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Boys Who Play Hopscotch 

According to Haraway, '''Gender' is at the heart of constructions and 
classifications of systems of difference. Complex differentiation and 
merging of terms for 'sex' and 'gender' are part of the political history of the 
words. Medical meanings related to 'sex' accrue to 'gender' in English 
progressively through the twentieth century" (130). However, the concept of 
gender appears to have developed in order to contest the naturalization of 
sexual difference and superiority. Thus, for Haraway, gender has the 
potential to both historicize and culturally relativize the analytical categories 
of sex or nature (134). In this capacity, gender represents the semiotic 
production of sexual subjectivity, embodied in "the history, practices, and 
imbrication of meaning and experience" (de Lauretis 167). 

The situated practices of traditional games are often conceived of as a 
laboratory of social relationships (Knapp and Knapp, 1976; Sierra, 1995). As 
such, these games are thought to provide essential training in social 
interaction and development. But because traditional games are often 
categorized by the sex of the participant, numerous scholars have sought to 
differentiate between the sexes on the basis of their play preferences 
(Crosswell, 1898; McGhee, 1900; Terman, 1926; Lehman and Witty, 1927; 
Erikson, 1950; Sutton-Smith and Rosenberg, 1961,1963; Lever, 1976, 
1978). Much of this literature has relied on a transmission model of 
socialization, in which adults teach children particular social skills and 
capacities. This conception of socialization rests on humanist discourses 
which view the individual as unique, fixed, and coherent (Harre, 1985; 
Weedon, 1987; Davies; 1989). Within this paradigm, children represent 
passive recipients of this socialization, as they are pressed into a relatively 
fixed form (Waksler, 1986; Davies, 1989; Davies and Banks, 1992). In a 
social world polarized around a male/female dualism, sex/gender is 
conceived as primary to this essential form. As such, boys and girls enter 
into apparently discrete and non-contradictory categories of gender. As will 
be seen in the following section, the classification of traditional games by 
the sex of the participants has served to perpetuate this dualism, producing 
some troubling conclusions about the social construction of gender in 
modern society. And yet, as I demonstrate in the final section of this essay, 
this structured dualism likewise affords the possibility of cultural resistance 
and agency. 

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Van Rheenen 

Jack And Jill At Play 

In a popular nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill climb a hill together. In their 
effort to fetch a pail of water, they come tumbling down the hill, once again 
together. In describing children's games, however, young Jack and Jill are 
often separated. 

Children's games have been categorized throughout history in terms of 
the sex of the participants. These games have traditionally been described as 
"the peculiar and particular property" of either boys or girls (Gomme, 1898). 
Two thousand years ago, Aristophanes mentions jacks as a game played by 
Greek girls, while Pollux describes an early form of Blind Man's Bluff 
played by Roman boys.3 Gomme classifies games of children into the two 
broad categories of (i) dramatic games, and (ii) games of skill and chance, 
attributing the former to girls, the latter to boys. As a result of such 
classification schemes, Knapp and Knapp assert that girls' games generally 
require the mastery of extended, repetitious patterns of words and motions, 
while boys' games demand players to strategically improvise as the game 
progresses. 

In general, then, the play of girls is often characterized as more passive 
and devoid of the elaborated structure inherent in boys' more strategic forms 
of play (Lehman and Witty, 1927; Piaget, 1932/1965; Lever, 1978; Sutton-
Smith, 1972). Additionally, girls are said to demonstrate a more pragmatic 
and flexible orientation towards rules than are boys, who tend to be less 
willing to alter the rules in the middle of the game (Piaget, 1965; Gilligan, 
1982). In preparation for adulthood, boys' games have been said to ready 
young men for success in the competitive working world of modern society, 
while girls' games and toys may serve to prepare these participants for the 
private sphere of the home and their future roles as wives and mothers 
(Lever, 1976; Seiter, 1993). In her survey of girls' toy advertisements within 
the twentieth century, Seiter suggests that these toys represent an 
"institutionalized" form of play, replicating the specific historical forms of 
women's domestic labor (74). In one example, an advertisement for 
Tootsietoy dollhouse furniture states that "the child is taught to play house 
and do as mother does at the age when impressions begin to mean so much" 
(Seiter 79). Like toys, traditional games have been heralded as a 

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Boys Who Play Hopscotch 

means of developing particular social skills. Unfortunately, the common 
paradigm of contrasting girls' and boys' play forms has too often led scholars 
to categorize children into discrete and dichotomous sex roles, perpetuating 
the binary construction of an artificial gender divide. 

In comparing the moral judgment of girls to boys, for example, Piaget 
concludes that "the legal sense is far less developed in little girls than in 
boys" (77). He bases this finding on the rule structure of select games, games 
which he characterizes as belonging primarily to either boys or girls. 
Adopting marbles as a representative boy's games, Piaget then chooses "one 
of the most primitive forms of the game of hide-and-seek" known by Swiss 
children as ilet cachant, to study the moral development of girls. Piaget 
acknowledges that he and his colleagues had first considered the game of 
marelle or hopscotch as representing the traditional play of girls, but asserts 
that the" game in itself is very simple and never presents the splendid 
codification and complicated jurisprudence of the game of marbles" (77). In 
discussing the game of hopscotch, Piaget writes, 

The few rules embodied in this game (not to put the other foot down, to make the 
pebble go into the right square with one kick, not to let the pebble stop on a boundary 
line, permission to rest in a special section called Heaven, etc.) show well enough 
how possible it would have been to complicate the game by constructing new rules 
on these initial data. Instead of which girls, though they are very fond of this game 
and play it much oftener than boys, have applied all their ingenuity in inventing new 
figures. For the game of Marelle exists in a multitude of forms; the sections drawn in 
chalk on the pavement succeed one another in a straight line, in parallel lines, in the 
shape of a spiral, a circle, an oval, of the pipe of a stove, etc. (77) 

Thus, while these girls apparently demonstrate ingenuity in their creative 
production of game form, Piaget is interested primarily in the social relations 
which exist between the practice and consciousness of game rules.4 He 
argues that the way in which children develop an understanding and respect 
for these game rules mirrors the way in which children develop a sense of 
social morality. This epistemological assumption forces Piaget to examine 
the particular rules of play inherent in these supposed girls' and boys' games. 
This poses some methodological 

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Van Rheenen 

problems. 
Concluding that the structure of hopscotch lacks complexity in strategic 

interaction and social negotiation, Pia get writes that "we decided to study a 
very simple game containing a minimum of rules and to try to find out up to 
what point girls look upon rules as obligatory" (70). One wonders whether 
Piaget's findings concerning the legal sense of little girls and little boys 
might have been qualitatively different had he chosen a more complex game 
than ilet cachant to represent the play of girls en masse.5 By choosing a 
"simple game" to represent the rule practice and consciousness among little 
girls, it seems a fore drawn conclusion that these game participants will 
appear less developed in their strategic negotiation of rules. The rules of the 
game are in fact less complex. To extrapolate about gender differences in 
moral development from such data seems highly problematic. 

Had Piaget opted to study hopscotch as the traditional game 
characteristic of girls' play, the methodology would remain problematic, but 
his findings might have provided some alternative results. As the work of 
Goodwin suggests, participants in the game of hopscotch actively collaborate 
in constructing the game of the moment. It is not merely the form of the 
hopscotch diagram which is creatively produced by game participants, as 
Piaget contends. Rules are constantly negotiated in dynamic social 
interaction. In support of this assertion, Sutton-Smith contends that "clearly 
one reason for [the game's] persistence is found in the freedom that children 
have felt to vary and complicate the rules" (1959: 198). 

The relative complexity of rules varies from game to game and from 
one context to the next. This variation in rule practice remains a central 
characteristic of traditional games. The informal nature of these games 
suggests that the rules will not be strictly codified. In the informal play of 
children, then, there exists no fixed set of rules, no mechanical jurisprudence 
(Hart, 1961; Goodwin, 1995). Like the creative production of hopscotch 
form, the rules of the game are constructed in context, negotiated in order to 
accommodate the participants involved as well as enhance the game event at 
hand. 

Thus, based upon her sociolinguistic study of a group of girls actively 
negotiating a round of hopscotch, Goodwin chal- 

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Boys Who Play Hopscotch 

lenges previous game scholarship which asserts that boys' games are more 
complex than those of girls. While her criticism is certainly valid, Goodwin 
continues in the tradition of viewing children's games as gender specific. 
Neither Piaget nor Goodwin presents these traditional games as dynamic 
social practice-as cultural texts in social context-whereby the participants en-
gaged within these social activities vary across time and geographic space. In 
the following section, then, I attempt to demonstrate the way in which a 
singular practice may be actively produced by both boys and girls. As the 
case of hopscotch illustrates, traditional games cannot be said to belong 
exclusively to either male or female participants. As such, findings which 
report seemingly natural differences between the sexes based upon play 
preferences more likely reflect the cultural construction of gender at a 
particular historical moment. 

The Case of Hopscotch 
A traditional game reproducing "traditional" gender values. 

In the past decade, two children's magazines began publication in the 
United States: Hopscotch: The Magazine for Girls and Quest: The Magazine for 
Boys. Marketed for an audience of six to twelve year olds, "with youngsters 
eight, nine, and ten the specific target age," these magazines stress a gendered 
point of view. While one reviewer contends that "the writing is objective" and 
that there is no apparent religious or political slant to these magazines (Katz 
132), the very names of these periodicals articulate an ideology of gender. 

In the current climate when "traditional values" are so fervently touted 
by a large segment of American society,6 the decision to adopt the 
traditional game of hopscotch as signifying traditional femininity seems 
telling. The message is clear. Playing hopscotch represents socially 
sanctioned (i.e., "normal" and "natural") behavior for preadolescent girls.7 

Conversely, Quest: The Magazine for Boys suggests that masculine boys 
will exhibit a frontier mentality of exploration and bravery. 

Of course, these magazine titles may merely reflect the play preferences 
of late twentieth century boys and girls. As will be discussed in the 
following section, hopscotch has indeed come 

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Van Rheenen 

to be characterized as a "girls' game" today. Boys, who played this 
traditional game more freely in the past, appear to prefer other activities 
today, particularly those which exploit the wide open spaces of playing 
fields (Thorne). But these titles may likewise promote expectations of 
gender behavior. Like Seiter's assertion that toy advertisements 
institutionalize the historic forms of women's domestic labor, might not the 
traditional game of hopscotch embody traditional values of male hegemony? 
As Goldenberg suggests, "Could this elaborate use of small spaces be one 
way little girls train to make maximum use of the restricted social territory in 
which they have to move when they grow up?" (263). This feminist 
interpretation of hopscotch may well support the cultural meanings 
connected to this traditional game today, but how might this same game be 
interpreted when practiced by boys? As the following discussion attests, 
hopscotch was once played almost exclusively by boys. Does the elaborate 
use of these small spaces by boys similarly reflect a limited social mobility 
for males, or have the gendered meanings of this social practice undergone a 
significant historical transformation? 

Rugged Boys and Sissies 

The traditional game of hopscotch was once played primarily, if not 
exclusively, by boys. Pliny describes a Roman game much like round 
hopscotch played by the boys of his day. Kiliaen (1574) reports that the 
game was generally known in the sixteenth century, played by Dutch boys. 
The game is featured in the literary works of Rabelais (1490-1553?), Fischart 
(15461590), and Basile (1575-1632), played by a male protagonist. In one of 
the earliest references to hopscotch found in England, there is mention in 
Poor Robin's Almanack (1667), of "the time when school-boys should play 
at Scotchhoppers" (Brand 331). Nearly two centuries later, Kennedy 
describes a Wexford (Irish) variant of hopscotch, asserting that "Rustic boys 
had a like game, which they called Heck-a-Beds" (608-9). The idea of 
hopscotch representing a practice engaged in by rustic boys seems to be 
reinforced by Guts Muths (1803), who includes hopping on one leg as one of 
the gymnastic activities promoted 

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Boys Who Play Hopscotch 

within his practical guide to healthful and amusing exercises. He argues that 
hopping serves particularly to strengthen the lower limbs, as well as give 
elasticity to the entire frame. The resolution to jump over obstacles such as 
brooks and ditches was thought to enhance the character of rugged boys as 
they mature into virile and virtuous men. Guts Muths makes no mention of 
this gymnastic exercise practiced by girls. Perhaps this connection between 
hopping and rugged boys has most to do with Guts Muths' assertion that 
this" simple exercise ranks among the most violent." In highlighting the 
physical challenge of hopping on one leg, he writes that "the inexpert 
frequently cannot advance above the little distance of thirty steps: on the 
other hand, I have frequently seen robust, experienced boys hop on above 
eight hundred steps, over hillocks, holes, and wheelruts" (199). 

By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, however, a shift in 
game production seems to take place. Hopscotch becomes a social practice 
popular among both boys and girls. Culin suggests that "two distinct ways of 
playing this game exist among the children of Brooklyn: one common 
among boys and girls called 'Kick the Stone Out', and another, said to be 
exclusively played by girls, called 'Pick the Stone Up'" (229). Similarly, H. 
F. Feilberg reports that hopscotch in Denmark "seems common in the 
country too, played equally by boys and girls" (362). Sometimes together 
and sometimes separated, both boys and girls begin to participate in this 
social practice. De Vries asserts that" Sowohl Knaben wie Mädchen 
beteiligen sich an diesen Spiel" [Boys as well as girls take part in this game], 
but adds immediately that "es scheint mir aber, dab heutzutage die Mädchen 
dem Spiel treurer geblieden sind, als die Jungen" [it appears to me that girls 
have remained more interested in the game than have boys] (3). 

In fact, the increased popularity of this game among girls during this 
historical period is striking. In their "Sixty Years of Historical Change in the 
Game Preferences of American Children," Sutton-Smith and Rosenberg 
contrast the results of four large-scale studies of children's games and find, 
among other things, that hopscotch gained in popularity with girls from 14th 
place in 1896, to 7th in 1921, and finally to 5th in 1959 (1961: 32). Similar 
shifts in game preference seem to have occurred world 

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Van Rheenen 

wide. In Japan, for example, the popularity of hopscotch among girls gained 
from 39th position during the early Meiji period (1868-1883) to 6th during 
the late Shôwa period (1946-1973).8 Thus, by the twentieth century, the 
widespread practice of hopscotch begins to be described specifically as a 
girl's game (Maclagan, 1901, 1905; Vanoverbergh, 1927; Frashëri, 1929; 
Parsons, 1936, 1945; Salas, 1947; Barnouw, 1956; Sutton-Smith, 1959, 
Sutton-Smith and Rosenberg, 1961; Scheffler, 1976; Plath, 1986), an 
activity perhaps no longer befitting rugged boys of the past. Menendez, in 
discussing the Argentinean variants of Rayuela (hopscotch), states that "Con 
respecto a la diferenciación de sexos, en algunos lugares la Rayuela es 
jugada exclusivamente por niñas; en otros es mixto. Nunca es 
eclusivamente masculino, yen ciertas partes jugarlo es considerado una 
actitud 'afeminada'" [With respect to the differentiation of the sexes, in 
some places hopscotch is played exclusively by girls; in others it is mixed. 
Never is it exclusively masculine, and in certain places, to play it is 
considered an 'effeminate' act] (137). 

These characterizations of hopscotch as distinctly feminine have altered 
the meaning of this widespread practice within the twentieth century. 
Rugged boys once played the game, but modern boys who cross the lines of 
the hopscotch grid run the risk today of being called "sissies" (from sister), 
or some cultural equivalent connoting effeminacy.9 These designations, 
deemed culturally derogatory, have been reported from nearly every 
continent (De Vries, 1957; Sutton-Smith, 1959, Sutton-Smith and 
Rosenberg, 1961; Menendez, 1963; Manilerd, 1986) within the twentieth 
century.10 Such labels of contempt alert boys to the fact that only certain 
actions are socially sanctioned as appropriately "masculine," negatively 
reinforcing any deviation from such masculine practices. These same labels 
suggest to girls that those cultural productions deemed feminine become 
socially marked and marginalized. 

And yet, as this brief historical analysis illustrates, the traditional game 
of hopscotch belongs neither to boys nor girls exclusively. As a dynamic 
social practice, hopscotch has become within the twentieth century a highly 
gendered space, a socially sanctioned space of femininity.11

 Thus, within the 
binary construction of the gender order, boys participating in purportedly 
"girls' game" become socially stigmatized. For as Rosenberg 

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Boys Who Play Hopscotch 

and Sutton-Smith suggest, it was "much more deviant behavior for a modern 
boy to play at, say Dolls, Hopscotch, Jacks, Houses, Schools, Cooking, Jump 
rope, Musical chairs, Simon says, and Singing games than it was for a boy to 
play at these things in earlier historical periods. . . " (1961: 41). It seems 
evident that this behavior is deemed "deviant" within the twentieth century 
because these particular practices have become culturally feminized. For 
those stigmatized as sissies, the adage that boys will be boys takes on a 
coercive twist. The expression becomes an imperative rather than a statement 
signifying future perfection. Thus, the gendered space of the hopscotch grid 
simultaneously sanctions the cultural production of femininity while 
questioning the masculine development of its male participants. 

In questioning boys' masculinity, notions of sexuality are "playfully" 
invoked, promoting an ideology of heterosexism and homophobia. As Lynne 
Segal has written, homophobia represses "the 'feminine' in all men [as] a way 
of keeping men separated off from women, and keeping women subordinate 
to men" (16). In a marked attempt to separate male from female, the active 
production of children's social worlds strongly discourages boys from 
engaging in practices perceived even remotely feminine. As a result, boys 
distance themselves from any games or activities which come to be equated 
with girls. In this way, children respond to the social pressure of conforming 
to the cultural definitions of appropriate and dichotomous gender roles by 
producing boundaries for their own social activities. In order to escape the 
apparent stigma attached to playing hopscotch, then, twentieth century boys 
have drawn further away from this social practice (De Vries, 1957; Sutton-
Smith, 1959; Sutton-Smith and Rosenberg, 1961; Knapp and Knapp, 1976; 

Thorne, 1993).12 
As this historical sketch illustrates, the traditional game of hopscotch 

has come to be viewed today as a feminine form of action. As girls began to 
enter social spaces previously inhabited by young men within the nineteenth 
and twentieth century, boys appear to have distanced themselves from these 
previously male preserves. While the historical evolution of this traditional 
game is perhaps noteworthy, it tells us little about the potential factors which 
underlie the changing meanings of gender and sexuality within the twentieth 
century. In the following section, 

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Van Rheenen 

then, I attempt to broadly examine the ways in which this singular practice 
has helped to reify gender as a binary social construction within the 
twentieth century. Focusing in particular on American forms of hopscotch, I 
address two sociological developments of the modern era which I believe 
have served to institutionalize the physical and social structure of the game 
today. 

SOCIOLOGICAL TRENDS WITHIN 20TH CENTURY AMERICA 

In the context of the United States, the rise of modern sport and the 
incorporation of recreation under institutional control has significantly 
altered the meaning of this traditional game. Both of these developments 
have led to an increased formalization of game structure as well as a more 
rigid separation of game participants by sex. 

Men and the Sporting Culture 

Modern sport may well represent one of the last strongholds of male 
power and superiority over—and separation from—the perceived 
"feminization" of American culture (Messner, 1987; Horowitz, 1987). The 
closing of the frontier, changes in the workplace, the family, and the 
educational system have all been cited as factors eroding the traditional 
bases of male privilege within the United States (Filene, 1975; Dubbert, 
1979). In this context, organized sports has become a "primary masculinity-
validating experience." Besides becoming a medium for adult male 
production and consumption, boys are often directed towards organized 
sports and other activities which articulate cultural definitions of 
masculinity. The creation of the Boy Scouts of America, Little League 
Baseball, and Pop Warner Football exemplify the way in which modern boys 
have been institutionally segregated from girls so as to develop a distinctly 
male gender identity. 

As Quest: The Magazine for Boys suggests, modern boys are expected 
to explore and conquer a competitive world, perhaps opening new markets 
and opportunities. The sporting world provides a symbolic arena within 
which boys may prepare and 

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Boys Who Play Hopscotch 

practice for adult forays into this competitive culture. Thus, institutionalized 
games such as baseball and football offer a cultural medium through which 
developing masculinity might further be validated. In this regard, sport 
serves to reinforce rigid definitions of masculinity and femininity as well as 
rationalize male domination. Like boys who are stigmatized as sissies for 
playing hopscotch, girls entering the arena of modern sport within the 
twentieth century have had to deflect accusations of lesbianism. For as 
Lenskyj asserts, "Athleticism is so clearly defined as a male attribute that its 
presence in women is automatically assumed to 'masculinize' her, if she was 
not 'masculine' at the outset" (1993:280). Ironically, a girl traversing a 
hopscotch diagram today, leaping over restricted boxes while balancing a 
marker upon the back of her hand, must demonstrate tremendous athleticism. 
However, this display of unquestioned athleticism in girls is seldom 
perceived as masculine. 

Thus, as boys entered the male preserve of modern sport, girls appear to 
have taken primary ownership of the hopscotch diagram. As sport was 
perceived as culturally masculine, the social and physical space of the 
hopscotch diagram became readily identified as feminine. The spatial 
parameters of these very games could be said to reinforce these cultural 
meanings. While most sports require a larger expanse—a wide open terrain 
of fields, courts, and diamonds—the traditional game of hopscotch is played 
within a confined space. Given these requirements of physical space, sports 
tend to be played further from the home or school site than a game such as 
hopscotch, which is generally played in earshot of these physical structures. 
The physical mapping of these diverse activities suggests a similar mapping 
of social structure, particularly as it relates to a hegemonic gender order. 
Men are afforded greater social mobility than women, while women 
continue to be culturally positioned (and in turn, position themselves) in 
closer proximity to the home. Thus, this modern reading of hopscotch as 
feminine practice appears to be supported by its physical and social 
structure. 

The names often given to the compartments of this traditional game 
seem to lend support to the argument that playing hopscotch prepares 
participants for domestic life, training modern girls to gain a certain mastery 
within this confined space. 

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Van Rheenen 

Particular compartments within the diagram are often referred to as rooms 
(Brewster, 1945,1953; Sutton-Smith, 1972). The skillful player moves from 
one room to the next, obeying the responsibilities and restrictions associated 
with each room. In other cases, the small spaces of the hopscotch diagram 
are actually called houses (Hurgronje, 1905; Bancroft, 1937; Winslow, 
1965; Lankford, 1992),13 where the ultimate goal is to take ownership of 
one's own house. A girl becomes the master of her own house, a housewife, 
only after she has demonstrated skill and proficiency within this feminine 
course of action. But again, this gendered interpretation makes sense in 
describing modern forms of women's domestic labor, but does this same 
game train boys to become domestically skilled and/or confined? How might 
we explain boys' use and control of these symbolic spaces within previous 
centuries? Perhaps this shift in game preference highlights another shift in 
domestic control, where women are understood within the sexual division of 
labor to represent the modern masters of the house. 

Institutionalizing game form and the gender order on the school 
playground 

The structural equivalence created between hopscotch and femininity 
has been further reinforced by the incorporation of recreation into the 
American education system. This development towards institutionalized 
play within the twentieth century has changed the context within which 
traditional games are produced. Previously referred to as a street or sidewalk 
game (Culin, 1891; Douglas, 1931; Salas, 1947; Fraser, 1975), the depiction 
of a painted hopscotch diagram onto the school playground has appeared to 
formalize both its physical and social structure. 

Based on participant observation of nine- to eleven-year-old children in 
four elementary schools, Thorne and Luria found that gender segregation is 
central to the daily lives of American school children. So central in fact is 
this segregation that these authors speak of separate boys' and girls' worlds. 
This separation by gender seems even more pronounced on the playground, 
where adults are less able to exert control and children are relatively free to 
choose their own activities and companions. This tendency to select gender-
specific games on the school 

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Boys Who Play Hopscotch 

playground has similarly been reported elsewhere. In a study of Thai 
children's games, Anderson (1973) found that games deemed exclusively 
feminine or masculine were played much more frequently at school than in 
the home neighborhood. Thus, in the United States and abroad, it appears 
that girls and boys play together much more readily away from the school 
setting, and seem willing to play games at home or in their neighborhoods 
which their same-sex peers would preclude at school. Thus, the 
incorporation of recreation into the schoolday beginning in the late 
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has appeared to segregate the sexes 
in their play activities, contributing to the social construction of a gender 
divide. 

The fact that playgrounds have "a more fixed geography of gender" 
suggests that children actively participate in the production of their own 
gender identities (Thorne 44). And yet, the playground itself remains a 
school-sanctioned space. As such, schools have formalized the physical 
fields of play available to children. While many of these decisions rest upon 
the limitations of real estate and the desire for functional order, these 
decisions significantly alter the cultural production of children. Concerning 
the traditional game of hopscotch, school authorities these days commonly 
paint a diagram (or perhaps a few of the same diagram) upon the playground 
blacktop. Presented as the basic form of this polymorphous practice, this 
painted and semipermanent diagram represents a design repossessed from 
children by adult authority, a painted form which potentially limits the 
freedom of children's play and innovation. This process of incorporating an 
informal game into the more formalized school setting has led many children 
around the world to refer to the modern 'game of hopscotch as "school" or 
"classes" (Byleeva and Grigoriev, 1985; Vsevolodski-Gerngross, 1987; 
Duran, 1995). In Russia, for example, Gorbunov, Efimov and Efimova 
(1994: 101) report that the name of classes, given to certain versions of the 
game of hopscotch, only appears after the 1930s. Thus, the incorporation of 
this traditional game into the school setting within the twentieth century 
appears to have altered the names that children attribute to this social 
practice. 

The painting of a relatively fixed form on the school playground may in 
fact discourage children from participating in this traditional game 
altogether. In discussing the play of Scot 

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Van Rheenen 

tish children, Nielsen and Roberts report that "perhaps as a matter of policy 
linked to the Best Kept School award [sic], the only hopscotch beds in 
today's playgrounds have been painted by benevolent authority. 'Beddies' is 
not much played in Aberdeen now: pre-decorated playground surfaces do 
not interest children for long" (34, my italics). As their own production is 
stripped from them, children are expected to passively consume the games 
offered to them by school authorities. However, children are not merely 
passive recipients of adult socialization. As skillful social agents, children 
may ignore these adult designs or they may reassert their own productive 
and creative capabilities. 

Thus, the structural constraints placed upon these games by adults may 
be actively resisted. It is not uncommon for children to add to the painted 
diagram, or bypass the school-sponsored form and draw their own hopscotch 
diagram.14 In this way, children produce their own structure for play. By not 
playing within the school-sanctioned hopscotch diagram, simultaneously 
defacing school property in order to assert an alternative identity, children 
risk getting into trouble with adults. Ritchie reports one child's concerns 
about drawing hopscotch ("Peevers" or "Beddies" in Scotland) diagrams at 
school: "In ma last school ye got the belt for drawin' peever beds in the 
playground. Fae the heidmaister tae! . . . At Abbeyhill ye could play peevers 
in the playground but the jannie was a moanin" (109). Despite these risks 
and threats of physical punishment, children continue to produce their own 
possibilities for play. In active resistance to adult authority, children sketch 
their own creations of this traditional game on the blacktop surface. It should 
be added, however, that these acts of resistance against the school-sanctioned 
game diagram or physical structure is a different kind of resistance than 
children challenging the social structure embedded within this particular 
practice. Children may produce their own hopscotch design as an act of 
cultural resistance while simultaneously reproducing the binary and 
hierarchical construction of gender. 

This does not mean that the social structure embedded within these 
social practices cannot also be challenged. In fact, boys continue to play the 
game of hopscotch today, despite incriminations against entering into this 
stigmatized space.15 Thus, 

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Boys Who Play Hopscotch 

even within late twentieth century America, the feminized practice of 
hopscotch should not be labeled a "girls' game." However, in order to more 
fully examine how both boys and girls interpret their use of/production 
within, and distance from, this particular practice, children must be made the 
living units of analysis. In order to accomplish this task, however, we must 
merge culturally texted studies with ethnographically grounded studies. One 
possible means of adopting this ethnographic approach in relation to this 
work would be to focus on those boys who continue to engage in this social 
practice despite its gendered marking. In the following section, then, I 
tentatively advance three types of social actor: tykes, teasers, and cultural 
resisters. While the following brief section is presented solely as a prelude to 
more detailed ethnographic work, I do draw from informal observations 
witnessed on school playgrounds within the San Francisco Bay Area. 

BOYS WHO PLAY HOPSCOTCH: TYKES, TEASERS, AND CUL-
TURAL RESISTORS 

The majority of boys who participate in the social practice of hopscotch 
appear to be several years younger on average than the preadolescent girls 
playing the game. These boys, whom I affectionately call the tykes, often 
play along side these older girls, representing perhaps a younger brother, 
cousin, or next door neighbor of one of the female participants. Boys appear 
to enter this social and physical space at around the same age as little girls, 
but they stop playing the game much earlier. Both boys and girls at the age 
of five or six seem interested in the gymnastic challenge of traversing the 
hopscotch diagram. Girls, however, seem to retain their interest in this 
traditional game until the age of twelve or so. Boys, on the other hand, move 
away from this social space after a relatively short period of time, often as 
they enter formalized schooling. Few boys older than seven or eight years of 
age appear interested in the game of hopscotch today. As demonstrated 
above, this period of time corresponds generally with an increased 
segregation among the sexes, a segregation seemingly institutionalized 
within the school setting. Similarly, as boys begin to experience masculine 
valida 

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Van Rheenen 

tion through competitive sports, joining organized, same-sex football, 
baseball and soccer teams, the hopscotch diagram is left behind. 

Nonetheless, older boys occasionally enter the hopscotch terrain. The 
reasons for their participation may be quite different, however. Some boys, 
whom I refer here to as the teasers, invade the marked and feminized space 
of the hopscotch diagram in order to disrupt the play of girls. The 
ambivalence of wanting to be a part of the girls' activity while wishing to 
articulate difference often translates into a type of teasing. This teasing is 
most prevalent on the playground rather than in a neighborhood setting, 
where the stigma attached to playing the game is not so severe. The teasing 
associated with the game of hopscotch is generally for the benefit of other 
boys, a way of reinforcing the segregation of girls' and boys' social worlds. 
A boy may try to make fun of the girls' practices, exaggerating what he 
believes to be their feminine course and style of action. These teasing boys 
are actively adopting gender as a resource for their creative and reproductive 
play. By reinforcing the gender divide on this physical plane, male 
hegemony is further entrenched into the dominant discourse of culture. 

Occasionally, however, an older boy will join a round of hopscotch in 
apparent disregard for the social stigma attached to it. He enters the game as 
a willing participant without the intent to tease or taunt. These individual 
deviations actively challenge the binary construction of sex/ gender, and as 
such, I call these boys cultural resistors. In their cultural production of play, 
these boys resist the social structure embedded within this game, thus 
challenging the dominant meanings of masculinity and femininity. While 
these boys may be labeled sissies for their social action, they likewise serve 
a critical role in validating the masculinity of their social critics. In a sense, 
then, their very presence on the playground helps to perpetuate the gender 
order, while highlighting the tenuousness of these social constructions. And 
yet, these same boys awaken the promise of cultural possibility, a release 
from structural constraint. The contradiction of their cultural production 
suggests that gender is clearly marked within the confines of this traditional 
game. As a dynamic social practice, hopscotch embodies these cultural 

22 



 

Boys Who Play Hopscotch 

and physical markings. For while the lines of the game diagram 
compartmentalize physical space, the social structure of the game tends to 
reproduce the binary construction of gender within the twentieth century, 
simultaneously affording room for social resistance. 

SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS 

In tracing the historical transformation of hopscotch, this essay has 
sought to illustrate how a traditional game, once played primarily by boys, 
has come to signify a feminine course of action within the twentieth century. 
A game once played by rugged boys, hopscotch has become today a 
stigmatized space, where manly boys dare not tread. Thus, by creating the 
structural parameters of a hopscotch diagram, negotiating the method and 
tenor of play, children actively participate in their own construction of 
gender. For as children divide their environment into chalked boxes for 
apparent amusement, they likewise divide the sexes into cultural categories 
of gender. As children enter into this marked and confined space, they face a 
divided landscape of gendered terrain. At play, these children work through 
these socially constructed confines, confronting other cultural possibilities of 
game and gender form. 

There is space within these traditional games to play with social 
divisions, to resist the imposition of social structure. In order to investigate 
these new forms of cultural production, however, it is imperative to view 
children as active social agents. On a daily basis, on school blacktops and in 
their own backyards, children (re)create culture. As adults, we need to keep 
these blacktops and backyards open, free from the bias of a grown-up 
perspective. By celebrating rather than controlling the range of youthful 
production, we learn from children not only about our own rich histories but 
also about a future of endless possibilities. 

University of California, Berkeley 

NOTES 

1. This notion of viewing games as habitable texts challenges the fixed nature of 
games as socializing agents, where the structure of the 

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Van Rheenen 

game itself determines player and personnel strategy. In this sense, the subjective 
reading of hopscotch as a habitable text returns the cultural production of meaning to 
the player him- or herself. Simultaneously, however, the structural imposition of 
meaning upon a particular reading will likewise affect player experience and 
production. The idea of as "open" text (Eco 1989) has been the subject of 
considerable interest within literary criticism. Of note here is Julio Corbizar's 
revolutionary 1963 publication of Rayuela (translated as Hopscotch in 1966), in 
which he encourages the reader to participate in the production of the novel. Cortazar 
suggests two possible ways of reading the novel. The first, which he associates with 
the "female reader," is to read the novel in the normal or passive fashion from 
beginning to end. The second, which he attributes to the "male reader," takes control 
(as led by Cortazar himself) of the novel's order by reading chapters in alternative se-
quence. As might be expected, Cortazar's sexist imposition of just what constitutes a 
male and female reading drew a great deal of criticism. In an interview with Evelyn 
Picon Garfield, he responds to this criticism with an apology to women worldwide: 

I ask pardon of the women of the world for the fact that I used such a 
"machista" expression so typical of Latin American underdevelopment. . . . 
I did it innocently and I have no excuse. But when I began to hear the 
opinions of my friends, women readers who heartily insulted me, I realized 
that I had done something foolish. I should have put "passive reader" and 
not "female reader" because there's no reason for believing that females are 
continually passive. They are in certain circumstances and are not in 
others, the same as males. (Garfield 108) 

While Cortazar's terminology is reflective of a sexist gender ideology, the suggestion 
that men and women, boys and girls, may read themselves into a cultural text 
differently provides an interesting point of departure for this paper, as the cultural 
production of hopscotch varies in time, place, and game participant. 

2. Space refers here to both the physical plane as well as the social relations 
existing within and across that physical plane. I borrow here from the work of 
Bourdieu (1990), Massey (1991), and Lefebvre (1991) in my own understanding of 
space. In discussing the connection between social and physical space, Massey 
contends that "Social relations always have a spatial form and a spatial content, they 
exist necessarily both in space (i.e., in locational relations to other social 
phenomenon) and across space. And it is the vast complexity of the interlocking and 
articulating nets of social relations which is social 

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Boys Who Play Hopscotch 

space" (12). In terms of this paper, I am particularly interested in Lefebvre's notion 
of social space. He writes that "Social space is the outcome of past actions that 
permit fresh actions to occur, while suggesting others, while prohibiting yet others" 
(73). 

3. This boisterous game for boys was called "Bronze Fly." Pollux writes, "They 
bind a boy's eyes with a headband, and he is turned round and round calling out, 'I 
will chase the bronze fly.' The others answer, 'You will chase him, but you won't 
catch him.' They hit him with paper whips until he catches one of them" (9.123). The 
game of Blindman's Buff was known as Hoodman Blind during the Elizabethan 
times. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet says to his mother: 

What devil was't 
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman blind? (III.4.76-77) 

4. Piaget defines the practice of rules as "the way in which children of different 
ages effectively apply rules," while the consciousness of rules refers to the way in 
which" children of different ages form [sic] the character of these games rules, 
whether of something obligatory and sacred or of something subject to their own 
choice, whether of heteronomy or autonomy" (14-15). 

5. In fairness to Piaget, he himself poses the question whether this gender 
"difference [is] due to the somewhat loosely knit character of the game of 'ilet 
cachant' or to the actual mentality of little girls." His answer, however, is not all that 
persuasive as he dismisses a very real methodological problem while making 
sweeping generalizations about all "girls' games." He writes: "Both of these 
suppositions probably amount to the same thing, since we noticed that all girls' 
games are marked by this polymorphism and tolerance (83, my italics). 

6. In this statement of philosophy, the publishers of Hopscotch for Girls and 
Boys' Quest list as their first goal the desire to "Instill traditional family values in 
elementary age girls and boys." 

7. In a telling article entitled "The Hopscotch Girl," Patricia Foster provides a 
personal narrative of her own troubled childhood. The abstract for this article states 
that "Her resurfacing desire is to see herself as a natural, hopscotch-playing, carefree 
girl." The connection between "natural" femininity and playing hopscotch provides 
yet another glimpse into the use of this practice within literature and popular culture 
as signifying "traditional" girlhood. Concerning popular culture, in two of the Best 
Picture nominees for the 1996 Academy Awards, The English Patient (which won) 
and Shine, young girls are 

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Van Rheenen 

depicted playing hopscotch. As these blockbuster films target an international 
audience today, a widespread practice such as hopscotch fits nicely into both films' 
global readability. While these scenes may be peripheral to the main story, the visual 
message remains clear: girls play hopscotch. 

8. Within the folklore archives at the University of California, Berkeley, one 
informant, Joseph Young (as collected in 1969 by his daughter, Irene Young of Los 
Angeles) recalls playing hopscotch in New York City during the 1930s, suggesting 
that boys played hopscotch while girls played a similar game they called potsie 
(potsy). Young remembers that girls and boys played this similar game separately. 
Another informant, Barbara Altman (as collected by her daughter, Gail Altman of 
Huntington Beach), recalls playing the game with other girls in her neighborhood in 
the Bronx, New York, stating that "boys never played potsy." Thus, it appears that 
certain versions were more commonly played by girls while others were more likely 
practiced by boys, or boys and girls together. From the above references, it seems as 
if Clum's description of "Pick the Stone Up" might be related in some way to potsy, 
versions of the game which appear to be almost exclusively played by New York 
City girls. 

9. The game preferences of Japanese children are chronicled in the 
Encyclopedia Nipponico, 1984: 352-53. 

10. It is possible in previous times, when the game was played primarily by 
boys, that girls who attempted to participate in this social practice were also 
stigmatized, ridiculed for being too masculine. I have found no evidence to support 
this claim however. 

11. This has similarly been reported by numerous informants within folklore 
archives world wide. Informant Samuel Lewis reports that this game came into his 
life about 1910 in San Francisco through a girl a few years older than he and his 
friends. Lewis adds, however, that "we regarded it as a sissy's game." Another 
informant, Diane Canning of Sunnyvale, California, states that she asked her brother 
if he knew what hopscotch was and if he ever played the game. He said, "Are you 
kidding? That's for girls!" This notion that hopscotch was popular among girls and 
avoided by boys has been reported world wide, from Norway (Tom Arne Lunne, 
Oslo, 1950) to Taiwan (Robert Huang, Tai Chung, ca. 1952; Helen Chan, 1975), from 
France (Anouch Chanazariaun, 1957) to Pakistan (Taki Tejami, Karachi, 1943), and 
from Israel (Tiva Pelter, 1965) to Ethiopia (Daniel Taruku, Dessie, 1970). The use of 
designations such as sissy, fag, or queer is relatively common in the informal 
activities of children within the twentieth century. In the 

26 



 

Boys Who Play Hopscotch 

popular game of "Smear the Queer," also known in the United States as "Bag the 
Fag," "Tag the Fag," "Cream the Queer," etc., a player throws or kicks a ball into the 
air and everyone chases and tackles whoever catches it. The brave lad who picks up 
the ball and runs from the others is purportedly "queer." Ironically, however, the 
longer this player can last without being tackled and mauled by the other boys, the 
more masculine the queer is deemed to be. This game tends to be most popular 
among elementary and junior high school boys, a game played at roughly the same 
ages as hopscotch is played by girls today. Thus, peer socialization around issues of 
gender and sexuality appear particularly pronounced among preadolescent children. 
For an interesting discussion of how the game of Smear the Queer fits into an under-
lying cultural paradigm of ritualized homosexual behavior evident in male-to-male 
sports and games, see Alan Dundes' "The American Game of 'Smear the Queer' and 
the Homosexual Component of Male Competitive Sport and Warfare," Parsing 
through Customs, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press (1987): 178-94. 

12. I borrow from Lenskyj here in defining femininity as "the socially 
constructed components of female identity: behavior, attitudes and practices, which, 
by focusing on sex differences, serve as outward and visible signs of women's sexual, 
social and economic subordination to men" (381). This social subordination may in 
part explain why low status boys within all-male peer groups are sometimes called 
girls or sissies. 

13. An active male agent who crosses the gender divide indeed risks social 
ostracism from other children, as the label of sissy or queer confirms. Many of the 
names given to hopscotch variants around the world may elucidate this cultural 
ambivalence with the appropriate sex of this games participants. In Spain, for 
example, two variants of the game, Reina Mora and Pata Coja, suggest this possible 
ambivalence. Reina Mora can be directly translated as Queen Mora, most likely in 
reference to a Moorish queen associated with the Moors' invasion and occupation of 
Spain throughout this European country's history. But, as in the English speaking 
world, a "queen" can also refer to a homosexual man, particularly an effeminate gay 
man. Thus, a boy who plays the queen runs the risk of being thought more 
comfortable with "female" rather than "male" characteristics and pastimes. 

Similarly, the name Pata Coja may be loosely translated as either "Bent leg" or 
"Hopping (Female) Duck," which seems logical given the movements of participants 
engaged in this children's game. But the term pata (leg or female duck) may likewise 
refer to a gay man in many Central and Latin American countries. The term pata 
derives, it would seem, from the Latin word pater, or father, or even from pato to 
pata 

27 



 

Van Rheenen 

(male to female duck) suggests that this masculine symbol, and the corresponding 
suffix "o," has been castrated and replaced by the feminine "a." Thus, a Spanish slang 
term which connotes a feminized male symbol depicts this gendered children's game. 

Finally, a North American variant, found particularly on the east coast of the 
United States, bears the name potsie or less commonly patsie (Goldenberg, 1993). 
This term has come to mean both the overall game of hopscotch, as well as the 
marker used by children as they throw or kick it through the various compartments of 
the chalked diagram. But there exists a similar folk expression which seems to have 
evolved within the twentieth century, the description of an individual, usually male, 
who is called a "patsy." This term refers to "a dupe or fall guy" (A Dictionary of 
Slang and Unconventional English 1984), or, even more specific to this argument, "a 
weak or cowardly man" (Dictionary of American Slang 1967). The etymology of this 
folk expression remains uncertain, although it begins to appear in print only within 
the current century. One reference to the slang expression appears in 1953, in which 
William Gloves writes, "You can hardly call a patsy a hero" (AP, May 11). 

Is it not possible that the derivation of the English expression "patsy" 
comes directly from the worldwide children's game of hopscotch? As this term refers 
to both the overall game as well as the marker used within the game, might it not 
likewise refer to a boy who plays this evolving "feminine" pastime? A boy who plays 
hopscotch risks maturing into a "weak or cowardly man," a patsy. Gloves' oppo-
sitional use of the folk term patsy with a hero similarly suggests that what once might 
have represented a male initiation rite (see chapter 3) has now become the feminine 
antics of a cowardly man or patsy. 

If the gendered interpretation of this modern folk expression seems reaching to 
the reader, we can more safely assert that a potsie or patsie indeed represents the 
marker used within this children's game. As this marker is thrown and kicked about, 
it becomes the central instrument or tool of use by the players. The folk term patsy 
similarly refers to an individual easily kicked about, a mark used for the benefit of 
others. Thus, the folk expression of a patsy may well have evolved out of this mere 
"child's play," commonly known within the English speaking countries as hopscotch. 

14. This idea of taking ownership of one's own compartment or house within 
the game of hopscotch has been reported world wide. Foreign informants to the UC 
Berkeley Folklore Archive have similarly reported this phenomenon. Examples 
include Maria del Carmen Infante (Rosario, Argentina, 1952), Cherrymae King 
(Belize City, Belize, 1964), Daniel Tariku (Dessie, Ethiopia, 1970), Tacio 
Myriantheus (Athens, Greece, 1967), Momo (Liberia, 1986), Thanhdung Nguyen 
(Saigon, 

28 



 

Boys Who Play Hopscotch 

Vietnam, ca. 1972), Liza Bird (Teheran, Iran, ca. 1956), and more. It is worth noting 
that this process of obtaining private property within the hopscotch diagram as a 
result of successful play, thereby forbidding others to set foot into this terrain, has 
been found in both capitalist and socialist economies around the world. 

15. Several informants to the DC Berkeley Folklore Archive have discussed the 
making of their own hopscotch diagrams onto the school playground. Karen Kresich 
Davis (Berkeley, 1975) reports of her sister's (informant Joan Kresich Icanberry) play 
during the 1950s: "My sister remembers that there were some hopscotch looking 
games painted on the playground at school. These were not right for the game she 
played, however, so she had to draw her own game." Nancy Mitchell (Redwood City, 
California, 1982) reports that "a certain number of hopscotch squares were painted 
on the cement at the school, but sometimes girls would bring chalk to draw more." 
Gilda Fong (Oakland, California, 1956) states that "if hopscotch squares were in use 
at the playground, then we would draw our own squares with white chalk on the 
ground." Other informants report adding to the school sponsored hopscotch diagram: 
one fourth grader (collected from V. Silver ton, 1969) adds that "the greatest part of 
the Hopscotch figure is painted on the playground, with the numbers. The girls take 
chalk and draw a circle at the end [of the diagram] and number it." 

16. It should be noted here that the game of hopscotch still appears to be played 
by boys in some cultures without this apparent stigma. Sierra reports, for example, 
that the game is primarily played by boys in the Tarascan and Zapotec cultures of 
Mexico. In Ireland, Brady reports that "the number of boys to be seen playing Beds 
has increased considerably lately: a few years ago only the girls played Beds" (153). 
These case are interesting as they seem to contradict the cultural feminization of this 
widespread children's game within the twentieth century. These cases similarly 
suggest that this particular practice possesses no inherent connection to one sex or the 
other, and that the meanings associated with the game of hopscotch shift both 
historically and cross-culturally. Nonetheless, these cases seem to be the exception 
rather than the rule of practice. From Australia to Argentina, from Thailand to 
Holland, from Korea to California, the social practice of hopscotch has generally 
become associated with girls today. I am most interested here in how children both 
reproduce and resist the gender order, as embodied in this dynamic social practice. 

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34 



 

CHILDHOOD NARRATED AND NEGOTIATED: 
CHILDREN'S, PARENTS' AND TEACHERS' 

VIEWS ON CHILDHOOD  
Bjørg Kjær 

In this paper I shall demonstrate how different approaches to childhood 
interact with the childhood narratives of children, parents, and school 
teachers. Childhood is narrated and constructed by different agents. In Pierre 
Bourdieu-terms we have a field of agents, discussing the definition of the 
Child. In this discussion, professionals have striven to achieve orthodoxy, 
i.e. the privilege of being experts whose utterances have more power than 
those of others. 

THE DANISH CONTEXT 

In the Nordic countries and especially in Denmark, childhood has 
become extremely institutionalized and professionalized during the last 
thirty years. Today we have a large labor market related to children, and 
childraising has become a matter for professionals as well as parents. 

Most Danish children attend daycare within their first year of living as 
90% of all mothers are in the labor market. So the concept of the Child is a 
very important category which functions as an archimedic point in the 
process of defining specific professional groups as well as parenthood in 
general. The public debate has frequently returned to the question of who 
should influence and leave their mark on children. In the seventies, there 
was a moral panic about indoctrination of school-children, which created a 
taboo in relation to the role of professional upbringers. They were expected 
to be teaching "facts" and useful competences like reading, writing, 
calculating, etc. But it was also expected that teachers would train children's 
independence and improve their abilities to participate in a democratic 
society; at least this is an implicit formulation in the text of the school 
legislation. So, as a teacher, one must both teach "facts" and "attitudes." 

35 



 

Kjær 

The questions of what are "facts" and what are "attitudes" has been 
rather obscure in the public debate, and the demand for neutrality has forced 
teachers to emphasize and make visible their teaching, and play down their 
personal opinions and values, even though the latter is an important part of 
teaching democracy. 

METHODS 

In this context I have studied how children, parents and teachers tell 
childhood. I have done so partly by means of interviews and partly by 
fieldwork. The former I rather prefer to call conversations or dialogues with 
people. The latter I would call folkloristic fieldwork, i.e. on the basis of my 
cultural competence I get into dialogues and interactions with adults and 
children. Being a part of the Danish culture myself, I have striven for no 
kind of neutrality. Rather, I have sought to expose the context-bound 
dynamics of communication in relation to children and their upbringing. 

I have been faced with the well-known dilemma of not being able to ask 
the informants about what I wanted to know because I wanted to obtain 
materials which would provide more than just examples of what I could 
think of in advance. So, instead of making questionnaires, I spoke with the 
informants about themes in relation to my interests. We spoke about children 
and adults, about play and school, about toys and joys, about the past, 
present, and future. I also spoke with the children and interacted with them 
in different ways, and I spent time with them, just observing. And those 
observations included adults interacting with children. I see this fieldwork 
partly as a way of producing social reality by means of my person and partly 
as a way of observing (this) social reality. 

THE TEACHERS 

On the basis of Sandra Dolby Stahl's study of personal narratives, I have 
interpreted the dialogues between me and the informants (Kjær 1997) in 
relation to communication strategies 

36 



 

Childhood Narrated and Negotiated 

and the use of style and narrative sequences of different kinds. 
In short, teachers tell in generalized terms, they express themselves as 

having official capacities as experts with authority deriving from their 
training. They tell no personal narratives, but many "scientific truths" about 
children's nature. But they do not just hide behind authority. They also 
express very deep personal involvement in their work. In this personal in-
volvement they make use of their childhood memories in two ways: 1) They 
tell pupils about their own childhood experiences in order to establish a 
close relationship with them, and 2) They refer to their own childhoods to 
aid in evaluating contemporary children's competences, needs, and 
possibilities. I shall give an example to illustrate the type of dilemma that 
teachers have to deal with. This teacher tells about the teacher-pupil 
relationship. 

Per: "There has to be a fundamental joint trust, namely, 
that both of us are basically fond of each other. And I don't 
say 'respect' one another. I say: are fond of each other." 

Bjørg: "What then if you're not fond of somebody? Did 
you ever experience that?" 

Per: "No. There's no reason not to be fond of them. What 
reason would that be?" 

Bjørg: "Maybe you are just not fond of some people." 

Per: "Yes, but I feel differently. And I know that I do. 
Otherwise I couldn't be a teacher. My task. . . is to see that 
there is a person who needs knowledge. And I must give 
knowledge to that human being. Because if I don't do that, 
I've let him or her down." 

This teacher expresses deep devotion and personal involvement in order 
to explain his obligations towards the children. It is a contemporary version 
of a classic nineteenth-century con 

37 



 

Per: "And by the way, I get paid for it." 

Kjær 

cept of devotion. This concept is closely connected with the very shaping of 
the professional teacher, who emerged as a skilled person in this historical 
period. This devotion is about morality, affection, and openness in relation 
to any human being that walks through the door of the classroom. This very 
sentence I just quoted, "Because if I don't do that, then I've let him or her 
down," is a strong statement of human commitment. But it ends in a totally 
different style, like this: 

This illustrates the tension between, on the one hand, the teacher's self-
image based on devotion, and, on the other hand, external demands for 
professional capacity to act in standardized and predictable ways in order to 
be fair to all children and trustworthy to the surroundings. This tension 
demands devotion and personal commitment from the teacher-but at the 
same time it taboos the limits of such a deep personal involvement. So the 
teacher has to say that his disliking a pupil is not a possibility.  

We have two lines of argumentation: 1) the personally committed and 
emotionally expressed way of telling, and 2) the professionally distanced 
and intellectually expressed way of telling. And these two lines of 
argumentation never meet. The teachers jump abruptly from one to the 
other. In this movement between the discourses, the image of childhood 
functions as a legitimizer and explanation. As a teacher, one is supposed to 
love all children because they are assumed to be alike-i.e. childish. On the 
other had, because children are alike, one can generalize in scientific ways 
about them. 

THE PARENTS 

Parents tell childhood in very personal ways. This is in complete accord 
with their culturally-defined roles as intimately related to and attached to 
their children. They would be bad parents if they spoke otherwise. They tell 
many personal narratives and identify strongly with their sons and daughters 
as they recollect their own childhood experiences. But the picture is 

38 



 

Childhood Narrated and Negotiated 

quite ambiguous because the parents also use scientific concepts and 
knowledge when narrating their children. All of the parents use 
developmental psychology to explain and describe children in general and 
their own children in particular. When the offspring are discussed, parents 
mention, for instance, the importance of play and sport activities for 
children's mental and intellectual development, implicitly drawing on 
psychological research showing a connection between the two. 

The Swedish ethnologist Karl-Olov Arnstberg (1987) describes how 
psychology as a scholarly discipline has led to the growth of a popular 
psychology living side by side with authorized psychology. According to 
Arnstberg, psychology offers personally based causal explanations which 
appear to be universal and place the individual in a larger context without de-
individualizing him or her. This is why scientific psychology is used in 
everyday life. The conceptualization of childhood gives the personal 
interpretations a touch of science. Especially in this field of childhood and 
child raising, the question of right and wrong is attached to scientific results. 

So these parents' interpretations of children are marked by the 
scientifically legitimated discourse of public professional childcare. Today, 
most parents are in contact with daycare institutions very early in their 
parental career, as part of child raising is moved from a private to a public 
space when the child is about one year old. Ideals, norms, dreams, and 
hopes, which can differ a lot, are narrated and negotiated in an arena where 
the intimacy of the family must communicate with professional competence. 
The reference to developmental psychology makes the parents' 
argumentation appear scientific in a way that signifies their mastery of the 
prestigious codes concerning children and their development. This style of 
well-informedness aims at mastering the professional code in order to make 
it possible for the parents to express their own opinions. The parents do not 
necessarily take over scientific frames of reference uncritically. Rather, they 
create a tradition of parenthood and childhood on the basis of a scientific 
discourse. They use this scientific discourse in refiguring their own wishes, 
norms, and morals in much the same way as they use their childhood 
memories. 

39 



 

Kjær 

THE CHILDREN 

I am going to introduce you to three boys in a kindergarten. They are 
best friends, sometimes referred to as "The Three Musketeers"—just to give 
you some idea of the character of their friendship. For about two years, these 
boys have been busy telling and playing endless Spiderman stories. They go 
on for hours, days, and weeks. Conscientiously they have been doing their 
"homework" as they have watched the Spiderman TV Show every Friday 
afternoon. They have made their parents videotape the shows, they have 
invited each other home to watch the tapes, and they have rehearsed and 
discussed conflicts and characters in the show. 

The teachers do not think Spiderman is in good taste. They consider it 
to be of poor quality and violent, primitively repeating a stereotyped 
dichotomy between good and evil. The boys use Spiderman in at least three 
ways: 

1. It keeps the adults at a distance, whereby the boys gain 
complete control. Here it is of great help that teachers 
loathe Spiderman! 

2. It serves as a good source for the creativity of the boys, 
as the characters are used, transformed, discussed, and 
elaborated in narratives and play. 

3. It forms a critique of cultural notions in the adult world. 
The boys use Spiderman to insist on the existence of good 
and evil—and they insist on the importance of their own 
judgments, which are far from stereotyped. 

Let me elaborate a bit on the last point. In contemporary Denmark, the 
dichotomy of good and evil is, in a way, non-existent. To be more precise: it 
has been transformed into a dichotomy of good and sick (or good and 
pathological) (d. Frykman 1993). This dichotomy of good and sick is a 
contemporary way of conceptualizing human suffering by relating to evil 
not as an explanation, as in premodern or religious contexts, but as some- 

40 



 

Childhood Narrated and Negotiated 

thing that has to be explained. 
In this process of explaining evil, professional caregivers, teachers, 

social workers, etc. play an important role. A child cannot be just evil, bad, 
unpleasant or disagreeable. The badness of the child has to be explained in 
terms of external influences such as events, which have made a healthy, 
normal child turn into a pathological one. This process of making evil 
dissolve into social, psychological, and societal circumstances is practiced 
by professional upbringers of all kinds and has become part of Danish 
common sense, a "truth" taken for granted. 

But by using Spiderman characters in playing and telling, these boys 
insist on the existence of evil. The pedagogues cannot accept such a 
standpoint since their professional identity is closely linked to the 
explanation of evil in order to make it disappear and make the 
malfunctioning child normal again. 

In these three different ways of narrating and defining childhood we can 
see that all of them implicitly or explicitly relate to the private-professional 
dichotomy, and negotiate the appropriate frame of reference. To my mind 
the different, distinct adult modes of telling the child must be understood 
together as a whole. The messages of private and professional utterances are 
important to understand some basic cultural notions in contemporary 
Denmark. 

I consider this tension between modes of utterances to be a reflection of 
an ideology of social life. It is an ideology which connects professional 
competence to both authority and morality. The greater the professional 
competence, the greater the authority and moral habitus. That which is 
formed as rational, scientific, neutral truths are as a matter of fact utterances 
about morals, attitudes, and values. 

Actually, the study of children's expressions is an eye-opener in 
pointing to these truths for what they are: cultural notions about the nature of 
children. 

WORKS CITED 

Arnstberg, Karl-Olav, ed. Bläckfisken. Om tillvarons tolkning, sunt förnuft 
 och psykologins utbredning. 1987. 
Baurdieu, Pierre. Distinktionen. 1986 trans. of La distinction. Paris: Ed 

41 



 

Kjær 

de Minuit, 1979. 
______. "Nägra egenskaper hos fälten." 1990 trans. of "Quelques 
 proprietes des champs. "Questions de sociologie. 1980. 
Frykman, Jonas. "Beroendets mörka sida. Ondska i en social kontext." 
        Ondskans etnografi. Eds. Lena Gerholm and Tomas Gerholm. 
 Stockholm, 1993. 
Kjær, Bjørg. "Childhood Narrated, Privately and Professionally." ARV, 
      Nordic Yearbook of Folklore. Ed. Ulrika Wolf-Knuts. The Royal 
      Adolphus Academy, Upsala. Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell, 1997. 

42 



 

BEDTIME STORIES  
JoAnn Conrad 

Conventional ethnographies portray a reality with limited complexity—from 
the singular perspective of the ethnographer observing the object engaged in 
events external to the observer. The multiple voices or personalities of the 
ethnographer are never invoked nor is the complex relationality of the 
object(s) and the ethnographer(s) to each other and to their situatedness in a 
context that is dynamic and dependent on their presence. In contrast to such 
ethnographies, in this article it is the process of investigation into the central 
question—the puzzle concerning the nature of the mother-child 
relationship—that is the main diegesis. This is a description; an investigation 
into the parallel, complex emotional relationship between a mother and 
child; an unfolding of the intertwined development of two characters' 
feelings and sometimes conflicted emotions, probing into the nature of the 
relationship of the characters in which the historical and psychological 
depths of that relationship are revealed. In unraveling the nature of this 
relationship, the rigid, separate and hierarchical polarity of other and self 
(ethnographer) is deconstructed. There is, in fact, no simple monolithic self 
to act as a referent to an equally monolithic other. The revelation undermines 
the construction of such an other and uncovers the dilemma inherent in the 
entire ethnographic enterprise which masquerades as representation. The 
inevitable categorization, distillation and oversimplification of reality in any 
such representation belies its complexity. 

In this ethnographic enterprise, the mother's questions on the nature of 
close relations parallel, reflect, and illuminate the son's stories. The 
development of the sensibilities of the characters in the piece is brought out 
in their juxtaposition—reflecting as well as motivating one another. 
Following the search for understanding into the deepening sensibilities of 
both characters is the main story line—anchored in no time or space other 
than that of the characters themselves. Here time and space are reorganized 
to maximally illustrate the search, and yet the puzzle that is the nature of the 
relationship remains unsolved. Rather that being provided with a description 
or portrait of "reality," we have in the multi-layered interaction between 

43 



 

Conrad 

mother and child a powerful analogy for the complexities and 
unresolved questions that are, perhaps, the nature of existential reality. In 
the play of surface and depth, the particular and apparently trivial moments 
of story telling are transcended, and through the allegory of the local and 
incidental lend substance to another level—the anecdotes themselves and 
the descriptions of story telling episodes overflowing their own boundaries. 

* * * 

It's early morning. I lie awake in bed staring at the 
wall opposite me. Something is wrong, something out of 
place. . . on any other morning I'd be in bed with mommy, 
after Pop has left for work. . . but mommy is not in bed. 
My door is closed, but I can hear voices, a lot of voices on 
the other side in the living room. They are hushed, and I 
can't make out any words, just strained, worried sounds. . . 
. is someone crying? . . . Why is George out there? He 
never wakes up this early. . . . something is . . . Pop is 
dead. I'm not getting up. . . I'm not getting out of the bed or 
moving at all. As long as I stay here and don't go out there 
he's not dead, it's still part of last night and I've just gone 
to bed first. . . they just haven't gone to bed yet. I'll just 
stay here and things won't change. 

I shuffle down the hall and the living room opens out 
in front of me. Faces turn and expand and fill the space. 
My mom is all red..."Oh, Josie . . . there's something I 
have to tell you. . ." 

CONRAD-George Fredrik, on  
Dec. 14 Born in Kaiserslautern, 
Germany. Chief Engineer,  
Coronado Ferries. Survived by  
wife, Mary Rita, two sons and one 
daughter. Services at Sacred Heart 
Catholic Church, Coronado, 10:00 
AM. 

* * * 

44 



 

Bedtime Stories 

"Whew, hee, hee, hee. Whew, hee, hee, hee. Whew, 
hee, hee, hee." The pain is rising up from the base of my 
abdomen, rising and taking me with it. I try to resist, to 
stand my ground, but it's useless. Quickly, in rapid 
succession, nothing, nothing, then screams, arms flying, 
mouth foaming, eyes rolling, dry heaves. . . ok, ok, it's 
over again. 
 "Her blood pressure is going up; let's get her 
 to lie down." 
 "Nooo. Please, it hurts too much to lie down!" 
 Before I'm fully supine, the pushing starts 
and the pressure is relieved. Push, push, push, hurt, hurt. . . 
and then. . . emptiness, relief. . . and a tiny cry. 

A wet mass is placed on my breasts. Placental blood is 
caked on his hair, but his eyes are bright and he is perfect. . 
. but where did he come from. . . ? Can it be possible that 
this beautiful creature caused so much pain? 

PETRABORG— Conrad Fredril,  
on May 15,12:20 PM at Alta Bates 
Hospital, to parents Guy Petraborg 
and JoAnn Conrad of Berkeley. 

A circle is closed. I try to understand what love is, how it shapes the 
ones it touches. I know that there is an intimacy I shared with Conrad, and 
for me, part of it is shaped by the physical link I alone have with his creation 
and initial nurturing. But does this mean that his father cannot access this 
intimacy, or that Conrad even reciprocates it? How does that reconcile with 
my own bonding with my father, however short-lived? No, . . . I think 
motherhood provides access to such feelings, but they are not immediate or 
necessarily forthcoming. Does a child experience love differently? Is it 
dependency? Does it derive from a need for pleasurable experiences? What 
constitutes an utterly un-selfconscious love? And can the pain of separation 
ever not be implicit in such emotions? 

45 

,..,._u. 



 

Conrad 

46 

OK, now the lights are out, and we're finally winding 
down. Why do they portray going to bed as such a quick 
process in the movies? The mom and dad just come in, tuck 
their kid in, kiss him goodnight and close the door. No 
hysterics, no crying. . . what planet does that happen on? 
Lying down and talking to Conrad once he has settled 
down is so much fun. . . it makes me feel guilty at the same 
time because I can like him so easily in these non-trying 
times. God, I wonder how many parents actually lie down 
with their four-year-old kids... and fall asleep with them? 
Maybe it's a big conspiracy. . . everybody does and 
nobody admits to it. It's like the TV versions of delivery. . . 
women looking radiant—yeah, right. 

"Hold still, you wiggle-worm!" He still fits neatly into 
the curve of my body when we lie together. I have my 
head resting on his outstretched arm in a gesture that 
seems almost paternal on his part. I really want to be quiet, 
I want to fall asleep this way, even though I'm supposed to 
get him to sleep and go out and do some work. But he 
wants to tell stories. He wants to keep this going, afraid of 
going to sleep. Is he afraid of this transition to the 
unknown? Or is he just trying to test the limits imposed on 
him, to see how set they really are? Oh man, this fat cat 
Fred is back on the bed between my legs. . . . Now I'm 
pinned in between him and Conrad. I can feel my neck 
twisted in an unnatural and uncomfortable position and I 
want to move, but fear my movement will get Conrad 
worked up again. . . . I'll have a crick in my neck in the 
morning. 

"Turn on the light, mommy." 
"No, I'm not turning the lights on, it's bedtime." "But I 
can't hear with the lights off. I need the lights on." 



 

Bedtime Stories 

Light comes into the bedroom from the living room 
beyond, faintly illuminating the forms and figures in the 
room. The lights from cars passing by in the street outside 
penetrate the space between the window frames and the 
shades, and large shards of light pierce the space and travel 
in circular patterns across the walls. The central bed, 
heaped with small figures and stuffed animals, is 
surrounded by the vestiges of day-time activities: art 
projects, clothes, clean and dirty intermixed and strewn 
about, puzzle pieces, books, ropes, balls, chairs, a small 
table. . . their indistinct shapes occasionally sharpened and 
given color by the lights from the street. 

I'm settled in under the covers of Conrad's double bed, 
lying on my side facing him. He is lying on his back, with 
his legs over the covers. He's still wiggling around and is 
physically engaged in the story telling. I like to watch his 
profile with the upturned nose and the full cheeks. I like 
the warmth his body gives up, and try to get closer to enjoy 
that, while not getting a stray arm or leg in the face. This 
warmth has gained Conrad a number of nicknames: 
"warm-bug," "heater," or, perversely, "the human worm." I 
luxuriate in his smell, my favorite aspect of our intimacy. . 
. it smells of young skin, wet hair, light sweat, and faintly 
of soap. Later in the evening, after he has been asleep for 
some time, thrashing about in his bed, I'll tuck him in 
again, and the freshly-washed sweetness will have been 
replaced with a stronger scent, one that I much more 
emphatically associate with my son. The sweetness of my 
intimacy with Conrad, the luxury of his soft skin, shared 
conversation and baby smell is heightened by its 
fleetingness. 

This is the final act of a regularly enacted ritual that includes a bath, 
nude dancing, acrobatics on the bed, diapering under duress, putting on pjs, 
brushing teeth, drinking water, reading stories in bed, and finally, lights out 
with a long period of 

47 



 

Conrad 

talking and storytelling in the dark. The stories unfold slowly, interspersed 
with conversation about the day's routines. Initially the narratives are 
informed by cartoon figures and plots, but Conrad quickly begins to fill in 
with his own story lines, which open up aspects of the world of his thoughts 
that are otherwise unarticulated. He wants to tell these stories, partly because 
he wants not to go to sleep, but also because they are a means of 
communication for him. They are encoded messages for me to decipher, if I 
expend the effort to really listen to what he is saying. 

I don't want to tell any stories. I just want to go to sleep.  
I hope he tells me one soon. 

"Hey mom, you know what?" 
"What?" 
"Ahmad got a Beetle-Man and him gonna share with me at 
school." 
"Cool! So, why don't you tell me a story?" 
"I don't know any stories. . . " 
"Well you do. . . ." 
"OK. One a time, [A]laddin, urn . . .Genie, and a who? 
Abo and what is that birdie name?"  
"Yago?" 
"And what is the green one's name?" 
"Oh, I dunno . . . that bird?" 
" Yeah." 
"Oh, yeah, I dunno." 
"Yes you do." 
"No." 
"You saw it afore." 
"I know but I never knew the name." 
"Why? It's Yago's mommy, really." 
"Oh, OK." 
"Her talk to Yago. The mommy. . . " 

Conrad slows down here, pauses, and then speeds 
up, and delivers the following in a much quicker, louder 
and more assertive tone. 

48 



 

Bedtime Stories 

"And Yago have the daddy and a mommy. Cause, after, 
um, Yago didn't have a mommy and a daddy. . . ? 
" Yeah?" 
(said as if crying himself)"Him be crying."  
"Yeah. . . ?" (sympathetically). 
"And after him have a mommy and a daddy. . . him said, 
'yeah! yeah! yeah!'." (Conrad's arms are raised over his 
head, and he jubilantly shouts.) 

49 

Oh God! He's stressing over the transitions, anxious 
about our separations. We try to squeeze in too much. . . 
school, jobs, commitments. . . there is no time to do 
anything as a family. Our schedule is erratic. No wonder 
he is telling these stories, no wonder he drags out going to 
bed. It may be our only set routine, and he exercises some 
control over the situation. But isn't he doing more than 
that. . . it's too easy to say he's anxious. . . he's trying to get 
a grip on the whole thing. . . his relationship with us, with 
the rest of the world. . .trying to figure out how he fits in to 
all of this. It is just ego gratification to dismiss this as 
separation anxiety. . . do kids really depend on us as much 
as we want them to? He's dealing with the conflicting 
emotions of dependence and independence. His stories 
reflect this. Having us around is not always so great. 

Conrad sighs. 
"Tell me a story. . . hmm . . . my story is short." "It's good 
though." 
"One upon a time a snake came, and got [A]laddin on him 
back. And Yago and. . . ate all the other guys. . . (smacks 
his lips and pretends to eat for ten seconds). And when 
[A]laddin got all the way to him face, the snake ate him. 
And Princess Jasemin came up, "shweh", the snake. . . . 
Hey, what is that moving? The house is moving. . . ." 
"Really? I didn't feel anything. . . " 
"I feel it moving. (Big sigh) And then her, Princess  
Jasemin came all the way to him face, 'swish, 



 

Bedtime Stories 

also). Then them went back home. And then the school 
was open and it was fixed. And then the 
Gargoyles came back and saw it was fixed and they wrecked 
it again. That's it." 

Here I am trying to resolve my contradictory feelings towards Conrad, and it 
looks as if he is trying to do the same thing. He is trying to balance his 
feelings of dependency and love with those of a desire to be independent and 
to extend his social sphere beyond just us. In the first story school is a good 
place. The kids are sad when they can't get in, and happy when they can get 
in to play-without the teachers. This is wish fulfillment, freedom within a 
safe, familiar environment. The second story complicates the vision of 
school. School is the site of the most traumatic transition and separation on a 
routine basis. It is the separation from me that Conrad loathes, not the social 
interaction at school. Seen as the source of this separation anxiety, school is 
therefore the logical target of some pretty heavy aggression, and a desire to 
see the source of the enforced separation eliminated—permanently. 

"Mom, when did you get married?" 
"Oh, a long time ago." 
"Well I don't want you to be married." 
"Why not?" 
"Because when you're married you talk with one voice, 
you're one person." 
"No, honey, I'm always mommy. What do you want?" 
"I want there to be mommy, and daddy and Conrad." 

Although I know that I can't grasp the full intention of his statement, the 
depth and profundity of them strike me, undermining my initial musings on 
his stories and exposing my patronizing attitudes towards his narratives in 
reducing them to such simplistic, formulaic interpretations. Conrad 
recognizes human complexity and the complexity of human relations. His 
articulation of this perception in turn sharpens my own. His desire not to be 
subsumed into a unifying experience or relationship echoes the attempt to 
interject complexity into ethnographic 

51 



 

Conrad 

description, to eschew essentializing, simplifying accounts and analyses. 

"OK, it's time to go to sleep now. Turn over and go to 
sleep." 
"I want you to sleep with me." 

Another separation, compounded with being scared of 
the dark. I hate the separation as well and would rather 
stay in bed with him, but I feel that I should have him go to 
sleep by himself. Am I afraid of the closeness, or am I 
following the dictates of society that assigns a certain 
stigma to a mother-son relationship perceived to be too 
close. I want to rebel, to act as my impulses direct, but 
something gnaws at me that he is too old, that the long 
term consequences are not good. Why? I turn over and 
close my eyes. Conrad turns towards me, press his face up 
to mine and kisses me. 
"Good night, mom." 
"Good night, Boo-boo. I love you."  
"I love you too." 

* * * 

Conrad and I began telling stories to each other naturally. These stories 
were in addition to and quite separate from reading books. The stories were 
often in collaboration, and at the very least provoked response, criticism, and 
correction. They were dynamic and tended to revolve around everyday 
events, retold in dramatic, exaggerated form. For a long time, my interest in 
these stories was entirely personal: I liked to encourage Conrad's ability as a 
storyteller, I physically preferred to tell or listen to a story rather than read 
one, and it gave us a special context of shared intimacy. I began to become 
intellectually interested in Conrad's stories during my investigations into the 
various theories on the formation and transmission of folk and personal 
narratives. Was there a deeper structure inherent in narratives that could be 
seen to have parallels in children's own stories, in the same way that deeper 
language structure was inferred in the processes of first language 
acquisition? Would it be possible to extrapolate, as Botvin and Sutton-Smith 
have 

52 



 

Bedtime Stories 

suggested, narrative structure from children's narratives? Contrary to the 
expectations embedded in these questions, however, in the course of our 
storytelling events it became obvious that both thematically and structurally 
Conrad's narratives were already quite formalized, and that extrapolating a 
deeper, inherent narrative structure from those of an as yet "uncontaminated" 
or "pure" narrative form of a child was an exercise with a flawed premise. 
What did emerge, as the writing and analysis of the project unfolded, was 
that embedded in such small, specific narratives and their telling was a much 
more complicated macro-narrative: the mother-son relationship. There are 
many stories within stories. 

Michel Foucault has claimed that the "author function" serves to 
disperse simultaneous, plural selves, which exist nonhierarchically (112-13). 
In this experimental and impressionistic piece, both the subject and the 
object are multiple and shifting, and in the shifting of voice and the 
laminations of time we discover an erasure of the boundaries inscribed by 
the categories themselves. Subject and object are not only multiple, they are 
constantly invoked and intertwined, and as their sensibilities unfold in 
patches and chunks of scenes and variations in texture, so the reader is 
drawn into these sensibilities. In this manner interiority flows from 
exteriority; the reader breaking through the opacity of the individual 
narratives into a reality to which she has only partial access. 

WORKS CITED 

Botvin, G.J., and Brian Sutton-Smith. "The Development of Structural Complexity in 
Children's Fantasy Narratives." Developmental Psychology 13 (1977): 377-88. 

Clifford, James. "On Ethnographic Allegory." Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics 
of Ethnography. Ed. James Clifford and George Marcus. Berkeley: U of California 
P, 1986. 98-121. 

Foucault, Michel. "What is an Author?" The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul 
 Rabinow. New York: Pantheon, 1984. 101-20. 
VanMaanen, John. Tales of the Field: on Writing Ethnography. Chicago: U 
 of Chicago P, 1988. 
White, Hayden. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Balti- 
 more and London. Johns Hopkins UP, 1978. 
Young, Katharine. Taleworlds and Storyrealms:The Phenomenology of Nar- 
 rative. Dordrecht, Boston, Nijhoff. 

53 



 

THE STATE OF PLAY:  
A REPORT ON THE CONFERENCE 

Julia C. Bishop 

A conference on "The State of Play: Perspectives on Children's Oral 
Culture" took place at the University of Sheffield, England, organised by the 
National Centre for English Cultural Tradition in collaboration with the 
Folklore Society. It was a truly international gathering with speakers from 
Australia, Israel, North America, and several countries, as well as from all 
corners of the British Isles. 

We were privileged to have Dr. Iona Opie as guest of honour and our 
opening speaker. She described how she and her husband, Peter, had 
become interested in children's oral tradition and how they approached their 
work. In typically modest vein, she stressed that neither of them had any 
academic training, the onset of the Second World War precluding the 
possibility of attending university at the time. Their total commitment to 
their chosen field, however, had undoubtedly been an inspiration to many in 
the audience. 

There were also five keynote addresses during the conference. June Factor 
spoke on "Three Myths about Children's Folklore," Gwenda Davey 
discussed continuity and change in Australian children's traditional play, and 
Simon Lichman illustrated the way in which the Traditional Creativity 
Through the Schools project used the study of children's folklore and family 
traditions to help bring together the Arab and Jewish communities in Israel. 
Allison James, approaching children's playas a social anthropologist, 
discussed children's oral communication strategies in the negotiation of 
identity, while John Widdowson highlighted the importance of the informal 
language used in the playground for the acquisition of the formal linguistic 
skills taught in the classroom. 

In addition, there was a plethora of stimulating papers on such topics as the 
effects of the physical environment on imaginative play and games, the 
influence of the media on playground games, children's story telling, 
historical aspects of the study of play, and children's music. 

54 



 

The State of Play 

The conference seems to have stimulated communication among researchers 
around the world concerned with children's oral culture. It is hoped that a 
selection of the conference papers will be published in the near future. To 
obtain future information on this, please contact the organisers at the address 
below, or join the e-mail distribution list by contacting Julia Bishop (j.c. 
bishop@sheffield.ac.uk). 

National Centre for English Cultural Tradition  
University of Sheffield 
Sheffield S10 2TN 
UK 

Tel: 0114-222-6296 (main office) 
0114-222-0229   (direct line) 

55 



 

NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 

The Children's Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society annually 
offers the W.W. Newell Prize (which includes a cash award) for the best 
undergraduate or graduate student essay on a topic in children's folklore. 
Students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. 
Instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the 
competition. 

Papers must by typed, double-spaced, and on white paper. On the first 
page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and 
telephone numbers. Deadline for each year's competition is March 1st. 

Submit papers or write for more information: 
Dr. C.W. Sullivan III, English Department, East Carolina University, 
Greenville, NC 27858-4353. 

Broadview Press announces the publication of Burning Brightly: New Light 
on Old Tales Told Today by Kay Stone (Children's Folklore Section 
member) and Folk and Fairy Tales 2/e edited by Martin Hallett and Barbara 
Karasek. 

Burning Brightly examines the storytelling revival throughout North 
America and discusses the hundreds of local groups and centers springing up 
and the story telling that has become an important part of training for 
librarians. Stone explores story telling through the storytellers themselves 
and provides commentary from her own background as a storyteller. 

Folk and Fairy Tales 2/e is an anthology designed to provide a solid 
foundation for courses in Children's Literature, Folklore, and the Literature 
of Fantasy. 

For additional information or examination copies, write: Broadview 
Press, 3576 California Road, Orchard Park, NY 14127 or Broadview Press, 
PO Box 1243, Peterborough, ON K9J 7H5, CANADA. 

The University Press of Kentucky announces the publication of An 
Appalachian Mother Goose by James Still, illustrations by Paul Brett 
Johnson. Still begins the book with an explanation of how the Mother Goose 
rhymes evolved in the Appalachian 

56 



 

Notes and Announcements 

region and then provides variations of familiar and unfamiliar Mother Goose 
rhymes as well as some rhymes native to the region. Still is also the author 
of other children's books, Way Down Yonder on Troublesome Creek and 
Jack and the Wonder Beans, and a number of books of poetry. 

For additional information, contact Leila Salisbury, Publicity, 
University Press of Kentucky, 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, KY 
40508-4008. 

Children's Folklore Section member, Director of the Dominican College 
Storytelling program, and internationally-known storyteller Ruth Stotter 
announces the publication of The Golden Axe and Other Tales of 
Compassion and Greed. These stories are variations of Tale Type 480, "The 
Kind and Unkind Girl," from all over the world, retold by Stotter. There are 
27 stories in full text, 17 summaries of additional tales, additional 
summaries, lists of additional citations and picture books, and a great deal of 
other material as well. 

For additional information, contact Ruth Stotter, 2244 Vistazo East, 
Tiburon, CA 94920. 

57 



 

CONTRIBUTORS 

JoAnn Conrad is a PhD student in Folklore/Cultural Studies at the 
University of California at Berkeley. Drawn to the unseen, everyday folklore 
that shapes perceptions, beliefs, and a particular view of "reality," her 
research often involves the intersecting currents of Childhood and Folklore: 
how such perceptions trickle down into policies concerning childhood and 
education, i.e., the politicization and socialization of Childhood; and also the 
very construction of Childhood as it is informed by folklore and commonly 
held beliefs and attitudes. She is the author of "Stranger Danger: Defending 
Innocence, Denying Responsibility," forthcoming in an issue of 
Contemporary Legend. 

Bjørg Kjær, born in Copenhagen, is a Danish folklorist and PhD student at 
Odense University's Centre for Contemporary Culture. He received an MA 
in 1994 with a major in folklore and a minor in rhetoric; his thesis dealt with 
different approaches to childhood and how these approaches are narrated and 
negotiated. Employed as a research fellow at the University of Copenhagen 
to study youth problems in the city, Kjær produced an article, 
"Marginalization Processes, Youth Problems, Culture and Ethnicity," in 
Contemporary Folklore: Changing World View and Tradition, edited by 
Mare Koiva, Institute of Estonian Language & Estonian Museum of 
Literature, 1996. 

Derek Van Rheenen is currently a Lecturer at the University of California, 
Berkeley, where he recently earned his PhD in interdisciplinary studies. He 
teaches coursework on sport, culture, and education. A former professional 
athlete, Van Rheenen's interests include children's folklore and gender 
studies with a particular emphasis on traditional games and modern sport. 

58 



 
 

The Children's Folklore Review is available only to members of 
the Children's Folklore Section of the American Folklore 
Society. To become a member, send $10.00 yearly dues ($15.00 
for non-US members) to Joseph Edgette, 509 Academy Road, 
Glenolden, P A 19036. Please make checks payable to "AFS 
Children's Folklore Section." 

CFR requests manuscripts that are prepared using laser printed 
text or letter quality text. We request that authors using 
typewriters or dot-matrix printers have their manuscripts redone 
and a laser printed copy made. This will enable us to scan the 
copy, thereby eliminating rekeying the manuscript. 

Please send manuscripts to: 
C. W. Sullivan III, Editor 
Children's Folklore Review 
Department of English East 
Carolina University Greenville, 
NC 27858-4353 

Children's Folklore Review is published twice a year and sent to 
all members of the Children's Folklore Section of the American 
Folklore Society. 

Published by East Carolina University  
ISSN: 0739-5558  

Copyright © 1998 Children's Folklore Section 


	Boys Who Play Hopscotch
	Boys Who Play Hopscotch
	Boys Who Play Hopscotch
	Boys Who Play Hopscotch
	Boys Who Play Hopscotch
	Boys Who Play Hopscotch
	Boys Who Play Hopscotch
	Boys Who Play Hopscotch
	Boys Who Play Hopscotch
	Kjær

	Bedtime Stories