In times of adversity, children should be given space to use different forms of play as a coping mechanism to explore their emotions and adapt to their current situation. In this article, we draw on the findings of three qualitative studies conducted in various countries with different levels of economic development to demonstrate how children use play to cope with challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Play serves a protective function even in the most difficult of circumstances.”

Models of adversity and resilience outline the multisystem influences on how families and children respond to difficult experiences (e.g., war, statelessness, poverty, natural disasters) across cultures. At the heart of resilience is the human capability to face, adapt to, and gather strength from adversity. One way children demonstrate resilience is through playful activities.

Play serves a protective function even in the most difficult circumstances, unmasks the psychosocial difficulties (e.g., anxiety, depression, emotional distress) children may encounter, and highlights the adaptive qualities they use to cope with adversities. Play permits children to express emotional connectedness, a perspective that aligns well with the contention that play is key to emotional survival.

At different stages of the ongoing COVID–19 pandemic, researchers examined how children used playful activities to cope with social isolation and school closures, and to gain an understanding of the virus itself. An examination of the play of Israeli children during the early stages of the pandemic revealed an increase in play interactions with siblings and parents, and marked changes in the nature and themes of sociodramatic play (i.e., acting out imaginary stories and situations; Cohen & Bamberger, 2021).

Photo: Cyprien Hauser. Creative Commons.

Sociodramatic themes reflected attempts to cope with fear of the virus through imaginary protection, seeking refuge from COVID-19, and beating it. Children turned to humor and displayed acts of moral concern for others in the family. According to parents, children grew in self-care, language, and motor skills.

In India, amid tight lockdowns, parents from low-income backgrounds in rural and peri-urban areas reported that they noticed few changes in their children’s play activities (Chaudhary, Kapoor, & Pillai, 2021). In urban settings, confinement prompted children to find new play spaces (e.g., under stairways, in the corner of a terrace) and to venture to street corners to play, often evading the scrutiny of authorities. Solitary and parallel play increased and interest in outdoor play rose. With dramatic increases in technology use, children in more well-off families turned to online games. Children were creative in modifying existing games by inserting themes they invented. As the pandemic progressed into the second year, parents noticed that their children continued to play in diverse ways and that they had become more considerate of others.

As in Israel and India, in neighborhoods of Toronto, Canada, photographs of children’s outdoor play demonstrated a tremendous sense of hope (Brownell, 2022). By participating in animal scavenger hunts for Teddy Bears in windows, locating stuffed animals hidden in trees, playing “I spy” games, and designing bunny trails, children learned to play with anonymous others on their street and around the block.

“Children continue to turn to play activities, either alone or with others, to navigate their way through the pandemic.”

Chalk sketches on sidewalks (e.g., hopscotch, galaxies, UFOs, underwater creatures, blue skies, grassy knolls, flowers) served to transport people to experiences beyond the immediate present. “Chalk talk” extolled hope (“you can do it,” “you are not alone,” “it will pass”) and prompted others to be safe (“stay six feet apart,” “no Halloween candy due to COVID”). These outdoor activities were not synchronous in that specific groups of children were involved. During a pandemic, they reflect children’s desire to invite others to play in their absence and offer hope to those in their neighborhood.

Amid daily challenges — online education, home schooling, and anxieties about the COVID–19 pandemic — these accounts indicate that children used various adaptive strategies to invent play spaces and engage in different play activities. In doing so, much emphasis was placed on different modes of play and children’s cognitive and social skills development.

As they do when dealing with other difficult circumstances, children continue to turn to play activities, either alone or with others, to navigate their way through the pandemic. At the bottom of it all, play permits us to express our humanity, examine our vulnerabilities, and extend social and moral concern for others in a global world community.

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Physical punishment of children has emotionally and psychologically negative effects across cultural communities, hindering developmental potential.

The increased focus on the rights of children worldwide has drawn greater attention to child maltreatment and the lost developmental potential of children who live in difficult social and economic circumstances. Yet depending on economic resources and political and social will, attention to physical discipline remains elusive in several low- and middle-income countries. In the main, such discussions are much needed at the societal and local levels in many of the poorer nations of the world to further advance the rights and welfare of children in today’s global community.

Across cultural communities, parents and caregivers use different levels of psychological control (e.g., making children feel worthless, guilty), physical control (e.g., restraining, hitting children), and behavioral control (e.g., setting limits, offering structure) during childrearing. In high-income countries, high levels of psychological, physical, and behavioral control affect children’s social adjustment and academic performance negatively. However, it remains unclear whether these effects generalize to low- and middle-income countries, where endorsement of the use of physical punishment can be high. At the same time, there appears to be a good deal of confusion among parents across low- and middle-income countries about physical punishment and discipline. Physical punishment is meant to inflict pain in the child as a way of dealing with behavioral difficulties and noncompliance. By contrast, discipline is meant to teach children desirable ways of behaving through redirection, explanation, reasoning, and induction.

Photo: Kelly Sikkema. Unsplash.

As august bodies (e.g., American Academy of Pediatrics, 2018) and researchers continue to warn about the developmental risks associated with physical discipline, it is beneficial to weigh in on what we know about the impact of harsh parenting in the developing countries of Africa. Over the last two decades, we have assessed the impact of harsh parenting across multilingual Caribbean countries. In diverse Caribbean countries, there is high endorsement of the use of physical discipline, but the outcomes of physical discipline on children’s social and cognitive skills are inconsistent. Here, we share findings from an analysis in about half of the countries in Africa of the links between maternal use of nonphysical discipline (explaining), harsh physical discipline (hitting child with an object), physical discipline (spanking), and psychological aggression (berating child) and preschoolers’ social skills, literacy skills, and behavioral difficulties. Our analysis drew on the UNICEF Micro Indicator Surveys of 32,817 biological mothers and their children in 25 African countries: Algeria, Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Swaziland, Togo, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe.

What implications might harsh and non-harsh forms of discipline have for child development in Africa? In our research, a high percentage of mothers used explanations with children, but endorsement and use of physical discipline were also prevalent across countries. Across countries, harsh physical discipline, physical discipline, and psychological aggression were each associated with higher levels of behavioral difficulties such as biting, hitting, and kicking other children and adults. That is, berating children had adverse effects on children that were similar to using physical discipline. Not surprisingly, non-physical discipline that involved the use of explanations and redirection was positively associated with children’s literacy skills. Only harsh physical discipline was negatively associated with children’s social skills, such as displaying independence and following directions.

“Some researchers have argued that in cultural communities where physical punishment is seen as an appropriate method of discipline, the effects of harsh discipline on child development should be less severe. Our analysis offered little support for such a proposition.”

Some researchers have argued that in cultural communities where physical punishment is seen as an appropriate method of discipline, the effects of harsh discipline on child development should be less severe — the normativeness hypothesis. Our analysis offered little support for such a proposition and instead suggested that harsh forms of maternal discipline have direct negative consequences for children’s behavior and early literacy skills across the African countries we studied.

These findings from 25 low- and middle-income African countries add to the growing body of evidence on the harmful effects of harsh parenting practices on child development. Moreover, developmental risks associated with harsh forms of discipline become magnified in families with poor material resources, poor access to health care, in the presence of neighborhood difficulties (e.g., violence), and with limited access to preschool education. It is difficult for children to show prudential interest in their social world and moral concern for others when parents hit, slap, pull, and belittle them.

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Diverse beliefs, practices and purposes of children’s play in different cultures call for skepticism that Euro-American approaches to child development are best everywhere.

Our knowledge about play should sound a loud warning to policy makers, educators and parents: don’t presume that there are single pathways to optimal child development or that one culture’s practice – particularly the West’s – is best. There are many effective pathways and practices to achieve child development, some better suited to particular cultures than others.

Three factors underscore this call for cultural humility, policy diversity and academic scepticism. First, play has greatly varied significance for child development across cultures. In some, it’s considered a pivotal building block. In others, it’s viewed merely as an incidental activity.

“Be careful what you preach. Avoid universal theories for child development. Recognise the cultural limitations of existing evidence.”

Second, the childhood practice of play differs greatly. In some places, it’s a highly practical imitation of adult work. Elsewhere, it can be a distant abstraction of everyday life, often taking place in fictional worlds.

Third, given play’s varied forms, many contexts and diverse attendant belief systems, we are far from sure about causal links between certain types of play and child development. We’re even further from proving the primacy of any particular approach. So be careful what you preach. Avoid one-size-fits-all prescriptions and universal theories for child development, parenting and education. Be sure to recognise the cultural limitations of existing evidence.

Narrow cultural focus of play research

Contemporary thinking about play is largely based on research in European and European-American middle-class families. This research emphasises play’s role during the early years in developing cognitive, social and emotional skills, and in preparing children for school and for operating in technology-based societies. Given childhood play’s perceived role in laying the foundations for lifelong economic success, it’s highly valued in these societies.

Elsewhere, however, play has different forms, functions, prevalence and significance. Who plays with children also varies considerably – be it mothers, fathers, siblings or others – and so does the importance that play may have in building relationships, particularly in securing child-parent attachment.

Non-Western cultures have different attitudes

In our global review of evidence, we found that mothers in a Mayan community in Guatemala see play as perfunctory to childhood development. They are amused at the suggestion of playing with young children. Such attitudes, which are also found in other cultures, contrast sharply with the highly involved practices of ‘helicopter parents’ and ‘tiger moms’.

Mothers in Papua New Guinea say that children learn through work, not play. In many agrarian or foraging societies, children learn subsistence skills and domestic tasks though early participation in these activities via a combination of work and play. For example, a study of Baka foragers in the Republic of Cameroon recorded 85 different types of play by young children, including hunting (making a trap), gathering (insect collecting) fishing (with baskets), playing house (play cooking with inedible materials) and creating clothes (making eyeglasses out of vines).

These traditional approaches to learning-by-doing or imitating adults are important. They offer significant contributions to contemporary thinking about how children learn best. They speak, for example, to the debate that pits didactic, instructional children’s education against approaches that focus on active self-education.

Photo: provided by the author.

Roughhousing with dad is important for child development

Cultural variations in play practices – and their impact – are prominent around children’s interactions with their fathers. Research into European and European-American families ascribes an important role to the kind of roughhouse play that is prevalent between Western fathers and their young children. This type of play is considered to be a pathway both to child-father attachment and to helping children regulate their emotions and social relationships.

Fathers behave differently in some cultures

However, in many societies, fathers don’t do roughhouse play. Yet their children have close, well-attached relationships with them and also learn to control their feelings and manage social relationships. A good example is the Aka hunter-gatherer community in the Central African Republic. In this collectivist, egalitarian culture, fathers don’t roughhouse with their young children. Nevertheless, Aka fathers are reckoned to have the closest child-father relationships in the world – they are very gentle caregivers, holding their babies 22 per cent of the time, according to Barry Hewlett’s research. No need to teach Aka dads to roughhouse – they clearly have different pathways to successful child development.

Cross-cultural research also leads us to question the universality of another often-held view about child development – that parent-child play helps progress with cognitive development. We conducted a study, involving 50,000 children in 18 African countries, where we looked for links between parental engagement in play and children’s literacy skills. We also looked for connections between parents reading to their preschool children and later literacy skills. We found that parental reading did indeed predict literacy skills. But parental play was rarely linked to literacy skills in these contexts. Oral storytelling by parents was more predictive of literacy skills.

Too much faith in universal theories of child development

 When we presented this evidence to an audience of British academics, they didn’t believe us, reflecting a deep faith in the universality of child development pathways discovered in Western countries. Western academics have particular confidence in play as a route to cognitive development, a link not always found in other parts of the world. Yet, even in Western societies, questions have arisen about whether the links we have been observing between play and cognitive development and social skills represent correlational or causal relationships.

“Different cultural practices of child rearing should be considered in developing advice to parents as well as in making policy.”

I believe in play. Children obviously benefit from it. But we still don’t know the mechanism through which they do so. Is play itself the vital component, or is the display of parental sensitivity the active ingredient? Play does encourage children to acquire social skills. It helps them adjust their thinking and their social relationships. They probably also learn empathy through play. But there are clearly many more pathways for these forms of child development. So we should be skeptical about imposing what works in the West on others.

Cultural beliefs about play may influence impact

 Why is it that play seems to have big impacts in some places and, apparently, not in others? We can’t be sure. It may be that where parents believe play is frivolous, mom and dad don’t play much or in a really engaged way. So their children do not gain many benefits. Beliefs about play may be crucial in determining the impacts it has on childhood outcomes.

Diversity in other fields of child development

Play isn’t the only area where we see widespread variations in child development practice. Breastfeeding is generally accepted as a good thing. It is considered important everywhere. But weaning varies hugely. In the United States, six months of exclusive breastfeeding is recommended. But some children are breastfed until three years old and weaned gradually. In some cultures, as another baby is born, the previous child is weaned abruptly. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), the newborn is passed around to be suckled by a number of women. We don’t know which practice, if any, is best for child development.

The takeaway message to policy makers is that they should consider diverse cultural practices of child rearing when developing advice to parents as well as in making policy. This is particularly important in countries with culturally diverse populations.

Parents in different cultures have different goals. For example, in technological societies, we socialize children to think in complex ways about technology. That might not be best in countries that lack the same technological resources.

We should also be willing to learn from other cultures. Capitalism, which drives so many Western attitudes to child development, is only a few hundred years old. It’s worth looking at other societies, less influenced by these values. We are beginning to recognize that they could teach us a lot about how to rear children.

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