ABSTRACT
This chapter examines risk in children’s play. We outline the development of a “culture of fear” around childhood, and the inundation of risk narratives around children’s leisure activities. These include narratives of children’s movement and independent mobility; playgrounds and risk; institutional, parental and child responsibility for risks of not playing actively and new norms of acceptable risks in playing outside. We interrogate discourses of responsibilisation and that of the new “free-range kids” movement within the context of public health’s recommendations for risky play in their promotion of “outdoor active play”. We demonstrate that discourses of risk and risk-taking in children’s play have come full circle, as they are always historically, politically, socially and culturally contingent. They have gone from attempts to contain the risks inherent in children’s free roaming street play to various reprimands if parents are not encouraging their children to engage in risky, physically active, outdoor play. Finally, we discuss how discourses of outdoor risk-taking might be co-opted by neo-liberalist and biopedagogical agendas. We conclude by asking this question: is public health’s focus on risk, active play and “free-range parenting” promising salvation (from a life of sedentariness) on their terms or on children’s terms?
