ABSTRACT
In Breughel’s painting Children’s Games, the canvas is filled with images of children playing. Some games are played only by boys, some only by girls; a few are mixed. It offers a tempting image for approaching the gendered history of children (or indeed adults). If one were to paint out all the girls, one would be left with a set of all-boy games (football, politics) which would keep their coherence and assume greater importance within the overall picture. Where the girls had figured, on the other hand, there would be a set of gaps, hidden games (skipping, convents) about which nothing would be known. Some games played by both sexes would have become hard to understand (hide-and-seek, the family). Not only that, but we would have lost all sense of balance between the children. And the same would be true the other way round, if we had lost the boys.
