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The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies pp 273–286Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Childhood: Leisure, Culture and Peers

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Abstract

A child immersed in play or games is not only a child preoccupied with leisure activities, but the cultural image of childhood. The European working and agrarian classes were still at work when the bourgeoisie conceived of childhood as a period of play, peers and leisure. Childhood was also understood as a segregated strange world, a state of mind. The latter was vividly illustrated by Virginia Woolf’s comments about Lewis Carroll and his vision in Alice in Wonderland: ‘he could return to that world; he could re-create it, so that we too become children again’ (Woolf, 1948, 83).

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Authors
  1. Ivar Frønes
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

    Jens Qvortrup (Professor of Sociology) (Professor of Sociology)

  2. Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

    William A. Corsaro (Robert H. Shaffer Endowed Chair in the Department of Sociology) (Robert H. Shaffer Endowed Chair in the Department of Sociology)

  3. University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

    Michael-Sebastian Honig (Professor of Social Work) (Professor of Social Work)

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© 2009 Ivar Frønes

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Frønes, I. (2009). Childhood: Leisure, Culture and Peers. In: Qvortrup, J., Corsaro, W.A., Honig, MS. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-27468-6_19

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