Playground Musings - I

We periodically take our kids to the local Westminster neighborhood park. It’s a nice park with a few play structures including a tunnel, a swinging bridge, and a few six-foot high slides.

One thing stands out when we go there – the park is not very busy. About half the time we’re there, there is nobody else there. When there are other people there, it’s almost always just a single family. This has been the case whether we go there weekday or weekend; morning, afternoon or evening; good weather or not-quite-so-good.

Looking at an aerial map of the area, I would make a conservative guess that there are at least 300 houses within a five minute walk of the park, and this park will be the closest park to those houses. My memory might be faulty, but I remember parks with a similar housing density being a lot more crowded when I was a kid. And it’s not just at parks; I just don’t seem to see as many kids playing outside at anything than I did growing up. For example, I can’t remember the last time I saw a dozen kids playing tag.

So I wonder if it is true that kids play outside less often now than thirty years ago, and if so, why? Some possible reasons off the top of my head:

• Indoor entertainment options are more compelling these days, what with DVDs, cable TV, video games, and the Internet.
• More kids are in daycare all day (at least for weekdays).
• More kids are in planned extra-curricular activities (think soccer) and have less time for free-form play.
• More families have their own backyard playgrounds so kids don’t need to leave the yard.
• More families have two working parents; maybe they have less energy to take the kids outside at the end of the day.
• This is part of a general trend of people not knowing their neighbors.
• Parents don’t trust their kids as much now to play unattended.
• Maybe the neighborhoods here are more heterogeneous than I grew up with, so there are actually fewer kids around than I think.
• Or more generally, my observations are only relevant to our local neighborhood and not the country as a whole.

I wish I knew.