ABSTRACT
My approach to children’s social relations has been through my own research in their play and games. I find therefore a considerable contrast between the ideas that I have about children’s social life and those which are typical in “socialization” theory. For me, child social life is a rambunctious, difficult, intense, and dramatic pursuit of mutual peer excitement as this is to be found in traditional past-times, opportunities afforded by the ecology, by toys or by the recreational opportunities organized by adults. This leads me in this chapter first to set down what seem to me some of the contrasting and prevailing notions in more “orthodox” socialization research, and then to move on to an alternative view of peer relations based on what we know of the way children “perform” when together in play and games. I will take the unorthodox position that because children choose to spend as much as possible of their free social time in play and games that, therefore, this should be the primary kind of understanding that we seek to have about them.
