Child's Play, Toys, and Recreation

The educational value of play seems to be a peculiarly modern notion. Traditional eighteenth-century parents generally insisted that play, along with affectionate behavior, be abandoned at the onset of the "age of reason"-as early as age seven. Such attitudes derived from the heritage of English Calvinism, and found voice in the influential Letters of Lord Chesterfield to His Son (written in the 1740s and enormously popular when published in the 1770s). Chesterfield wrote his young son: "No more levity: childish toys and playthings must be thrown aside, and your mind directed to serious objects." Other eighteenth-century parents must, however, be credited with the discovery that play could be instructive. Philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau advocated increased freedom for children. He and others promoted play, especially out-of-doors, for developing physical strength. Child's play came to embody innocence, a romanticized world lost to adults and recorded by many artists. When the childless artist and poet William Blake observed a group of children playing in London's Fountain Court, he exclaimed, "That is heaven!"

By the 1790s, even Queen Charlotte famously indulged child's play, amusing her children with innumerable playthings-miniature toy dogs, horses, a cobbler, a Noah's ark.

William Hogarth
1697-1764
The House of Cards
1730
Oil on canvas
National Museum of Wales