Kids Need More Structured Playtime, Not Less

The cover story of last month’s Atlantic magazine struck a nerve with many parents. Written by Hanna Rosin, an Atlantic national correspondent, and titled, “The Overprotected Kid,” it describes a generation of children who have experienced hardly an unsupervised or unstructured moment in their lives. Looking for an alternative to America’s risk-averse culture of child rearing, the author takes her 5-year-old son, Gabriel, on a trip to North Wales, where an “adventure playground” called the Land opened two years ago.

At the Land, there are few rules and minimal adult intervention. Ms. Rosin describes children starting fires, building forts using hammers and wooden pallets and doing flips “on a stack of filthy mattresses.” She watches as children push tires (and at one point, her willing son, sitting in a bin) into a creek. She concedes that the goings-on at the Land fall outside what most American parents would find acceptable; she presents this extreme version of youthful freedom to make a point. But is her point right?

Lauren McNamara would say no. An assistant professor of educational psychology at Brock University in Canada, she has studied what goes on among children during unstructured playtime. Professor McNamara, who grew up in California, conducted research at schools in Chicago before joining the faculty at Brock, in St. Catharines, Ontario.