ABSTRACT
Children, like many other young mammals, spend a considerable amount of time and energy at 'play'. Play is seen as free, absorbing, spontaneous, enjoyable, and not serious and done for oneself, not for other people. Play is found in the young of many species. It seems to be common practice in our society to draw a distinction between 'work' and 'play'. The work/play distinction is conflated with the distinction between having to work and being free to do what one wishes, and 'play' is seen as voluntary and not obligatory. Because of the possible biological impetus to play, one strand of interest in theories of why play happens is the consideration of evolution and biological function. Initial object play is often said to be 'indiscriminate' in that infants assimilate objects to their repertory of behaviours, like grasping, shaking and mouthing without much adjustment to the object's particular characteristics.
