CHILDRENS OUTDOOR PLAY - EXPLORING PARENTAL CONCERNS ABOUT CHILDRENS SAFETY AND THE CHANGING NATURE OF CHILDHOOD

This paper uses the evidence of research conducted in North-West Engla nd to explore the extent to which parents consider that there are adeq uate public facilities and play opportunities in their neighbourhoods for their children; and it considers whether children's experiences of outdoor play is changing, by comparing contemporary children's play w ith both previous academic studies of children's independent use of sp ace and with parents' accounts of their own childhoods. The findings p resented suggest that the vast majority of parents are dissatisfied wi th the public provision of play facilities in their neighbourhood. Tem poral and spatial changes also appear to have occurred in patterns of children's outdoor play over the last three decades. Fewer children ar e playing outdoors and the location of most outdoor play is now closed centred on the home rather than the street. There appears to be no li nk between play patterns and play provision; children are no more like ly to play outdoors, or play further away from home if there are adequ ate opportunities provided within their neighbourhood. Rather, the evi dence of this paper is that the most significant influence on children 's access to independent play is not the level of public provision of play facilities but parental anxieties about children's safety and the changing nature of childhood. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.