ABSTRACT
For almost as long as children have been considered worth studying separately from the total man, the phenomenon of play has engaged the attention of philosophers and psychologists. In discussions of the ways in which parents exert control over their children, there is sometimes a tendency to underestimate the means by which mothers guide the behaviour of their children by example and encouragement. This chapter presents an analysis of the incidence of fantasy communications, broken down as before by family size and social class. In the first place, one might expect the ready availability of real playmates to be, to some extent, inimical to the development of an elaborate private fantasy world. Mothers themselves were inclined to regard such behaviour, particularly that involving imaginary companions, as a symptom of the child's social isolation. Children with only one brother or sister, or only children, do significantly more often have known fantasies than children from larger families.
