ABSTRACT
Despite the crowded conditions of modern urban living, it is clear that many four-year-olds do not have great opportunity for playing regularly with others of similar age; and, where other children are available, play comparatively rarely takes place under the kind of adult supervision which encourages more civilized behaviour and promotes social learning of the more constructive sort. The control of aggression is in fact for most mothers the central problem of children's social play, whatever the attitude they take. When taken together, all the findings summarized in the chapter tend to suggest that there are significant class differences in children's early experience of the social world outside the family. For the middle-class child, supported as he is during the pre-school years by careful supervision and copious verbal explanation of the principles he must follow, the child's early moral training is continuously reinforced by an environment in which his mother expects to exercise at least remote control at all times.
