Kid customer? Commercialization of playspace and the commodification of childhood

The growth of commercial playgrounds in the UK is part of a broader process whereby ever greater realms of children's lives are commodified. McNeal's theory of the social group of children as a market is introduced as a frame work through which commercial playgrounds may be understood. An introductio n to commercial playgrounds and the project from which the article is deriv ed sets the context for an analysis of how parents and children perceive an d experience these environments, how they are marketed to them and how they consume them. It is found that it is overly simplistic tb suggest that the se new developments are testimony to the new-found consumer power of childr en. Children play a marginal role: in the production of these play environm ents; in contributing to parents' information field prior to decision-makin g;and in the visit decision-making process. Some groups of children are fou nd to be more active consumers of these spaces; children with fewer sibling s and children outside two-parent families being significantly more likely to contribute to decisionmaking. However, 'active consumption' is not distr ibuted evenly across different types of commercial playground. Of particula r significance is that children are more marginal to the decisionmaking pro cess for family pubs, the domain which has traditionally been the preserve of adults. In conclusion, it is argued that the social group of children is not a primary, secondary or tertiary market. Rather, these new commercial playgrounds provide primarily for the needs of adults (for themselves and w ith respect to how they want their children to play) and, to a lesser exten t, for the needs of children.