Abstract
Physical activity, through independent outdoor play, has come to the fore as a way to improve children's health through it fostering healthy mental and social as well as physiological development. However, in many high-income countries children's autonomous play opportunities have diminished due to urban intensification and declining parental license. Regardless of this trend, children's play varies across countries, cities, cultures and seasons. This paper offers new insights into the complexities of play as a vital aspect of children's wellbeing. Within the context of New Zealand – whose citizens generally regard themselves as outdoor people – this paper explores why ‘play’ might resonate differently across localities and seasons. We contrast the play affordances provided by Auckland's central city (dominated by apartment living) with Beach Haven, a suburban area. We employed a multi-method approach and included 20 children and their parents who were recruited through school and summer holiday programs embracing different gender and ethnicities to reflect the general cultural mix of the respective neighbourhoods. We advance two arguments. First, we suggest that the rarity of children playing outdoors unsupervised normalises supervised indoor play and reduces children's opportunities to see outdoor play as an alternative to interior or supervised pastimes. Second, we follow Bourdieu's theory of practice to argue that the regard parents and children have towards outdoor play reflects locally constituted beliefs about what is seasonally ‘appropriate’ children's activity. We found that extra-curricular activities and supervised excursions are undertaken in the central city all year around and only vary between social groups by the type of destination. In the suburb, independent outdoor play in summer represents children's main business after school in ways that enhance their environmental literacy and potential future health gain. For others these symbolic values were replaced by safety concerns. In contrast, it seems that even in a relatively mild climate winter is the time to relax and stay indoors unless children have an outdoor habitus. We find that the determinants of seasonal outdoor play transcend modifiable barriers such as traffic and unsuitable play spaces as well as the inevitable issue of inclement weather.
► A theoretical framework is proposed that combines Gibson’s concept of ‘affordances’ with Bourdieu’s theory of practice. ► This framework challenges the implicit environmental determinism of much physical activity research on play. ► Determinants of seasonal outdoor play are shown to transcend modifiable barriers and the issue of inclement weather.