"The society that separates it's scholars from it's warriors will have it's thinking done by cowards, and it's fighting by fools." ~Thucydides
I have noticed that kids these days don't successfully play fight much. It's not that they don't get into scuffles, arguments, or scenarios where they could fight. It's not that we are less violent than we have ever been ( although
some disagree). It seems to me that some how in our disease of affluence we have come to view fighting as something that people of less social standing do and not something to be associated with. Parents stopping their sons before the play fighting can even begin; recess monitors not allowing kids to do even semi-reckless things on the playground. Don't be that parent. Allow your children the chance to grow socially in the most organic and evolutionary stable way.
Much of what I will be writing about is based off a journal article I have recently read from
epjournal.net site. But before we set off on this road about why I will convince you that rough and tumble play should not only be encouraged but is necessary to develop socially well adjusted more peaceful adults, let's define "rough and tumble".
"Rough and Tumble" (R&T) play has been defined as a physically vigorous set of behaviors Rough and Tumble, such as chase, jump and play fight, accompanied by positive affect from the players towards one another (Pellegrini, 1995) - Evolutionary Psycology.
There was a time when the idea of school meant not only the development of the mind, but also the development of the body. This comes from the inclusion of the gymnasium (taken from the greek gymnasiums where citizens went daily to workout, and socialize) and unfortunately today many schools are cutting funding to gym classes but also trying to get rid of recess. The viewpoint of many administrators is that school should be improving academic performance, and
not having kids hanging on monkey bars. However, if cuts do need to be made, I would posit that recess is the more important. Because it is on the playground where children can initiate unstructured original activities, collectively creating and negotiating peer based social rule systems (ie: there are no refs on the playground except each other).
So what does the exclusion of rough and tumble play mean for males as opposed to females?
During early infanthood, there is a surge of testosterone in the male physiology. This has an organizing effect on how this particular male will develop later on in life. Later during puberty there is another surge and it activates the male body developing what the adult male will look like. This testosterone priming and activation helps create the masculine features of what our culture deems culturally attractive as well as form the social network building that is ever so important in male only peer groups. R&T play represents one of the few behaviors that helps to organize this hormone exposure. In the absence of this activity, males do not activate the gene expressions to make them as masculine as they could be and tend to be less socially skilled. Both of these missing traits will have an impact on how they are perceived as an adult. If R&T play helps to foster an understanding of what is socially acceptable in a a peer group setting, then the lack of R&T would create adolescents and adults who are more violent. Violent in the way that it is an activity that is not deemed normal behavior. Being competitive during a game of basketball is normal, punching a guy out because he fouled you is not.
One of the most interesting things about us primates is how we shape our world. It is through story and narrative that we have long made sense of the world around us. However, the stories that shape our world are different for males and females. What do those narratives mean for our first free play activities?
Studies of playground activity typically find that boys are more involved with physically active play that revolves around issues of dominance and status, while girls prefer more sedentary play exploring more symmetrical, co-operative relationships (Maccoby, 1998, Pellegrini 2005). - Evolutionary Psycology.
Now before you send me a bunch of hate mail saying that girls can't play fight as good as the boys, don't worry I agree with you. But the point I am trying to make is that boys ( as well as girls) need these opportunities to create friendships. And that boys and girls tend to do this differently. This doesn't mean girls don't compete, just that they do so in a different way than boys ( and both can be listed as R&T). Girls tend to build a sense of community in their language, are concerned with creating solidarity within peer groups. On the other hand, girls tend to not engage in direct physical or verbal aggression but employ regional aggression, undermining in-group peer relations. Boys tend to be less concerned with being nice and more concerned with risk taking but still have underlying concerns about the group as a whole. Weak individuals (being physically or socially), are not seen as worthy of male group membership. So alpha females seem to be the "nicest" while alpha males tend to be seen as "dominant".
When this is played out in sexual selection later in life, males can achieve success by directly competing with other males for status and resources. In many primates, females typically care for their children within female kin groups and the pathway to success is through building and maintaining strong relations with the other females of her kin group. This co-operation mixed with manipulation is present in 4-5 year old females but not in male groups.
Their study of single-gender interaction found that girl groups tended to form under the control of a single, dominant female who used relational aggression to retain her authority, while male interaction tended to involve dominance behaviors from the majority of group members. While some boys would be more successful than others in their dominance attempts, these researchers noted that all-male groups did not typically fall under the control of a single boy to such a great extent. - Evolutionary Psycology.
This also plays out in how we express ourselves. Boys stories tend to have a competitive surface structure but also provides a framework for group solidarity. Girls' talk has a cooperative surface structure but provides a framework where they can compete for emotional dominance with their group.
So what have the urban and suburban environment done to kids play?
Much of early twenty first century out-of-school activity involves armchair-bound, solitary playing of computer games, some of which re-create physical activities such as ball games and skate-boarding, complete with digital companions whose reactions have been artificially programmed by adults... or involve being driven to various supervised venues for adult-directed activities. - Evolutionary Psycology.
Essentially we have cut children off of the evolutionary stable method of developing socially acceptable behaviors for later in life. But when given the chance to develop "deep free play" children in single gender or mixed gender groups do develop these strategies to maximize their interaction with inclusive peer groups. In fact when in mixed gender groups, the "deepest" R&T play tend to come out. Detailed planning and discussion on what is or is not acceptable is discussed and a more complex set of behaviors is observed than when in single gender activities.
So back to "fighting". Why is this important for adults? Well in my experience, you never really know someone, nor can you really know yourself until you have been in a fight. A person's true character tend to come out. If the person is sneaky, they will tend to do sneaky undermining things. If the person is honest, they will fight honestly. And win or lose everyone involved whether they are participants in the fight or just spectators, will have caught a glimpse of that persons truest self. In an age of "the facebook" where a person can tweak every little thing in order for people to see them in the exact light they would want to be, it is nice to get past all that "first few dates" nonsense and see and interact with real people for a change.
So did I convince you?
