This is bound to become one of my favorite academic treatises tin a very long while. According to an article in the Boston Globe, a Utah State professor, David Lancy, argues that American push for parent-child play is misguided elitism run amok.

It's become conventional wisdom that a "good" parent spends a lot of time on the floor, playing with his or her kids. This helps develop their language and intellectual skills and prevents them from falling behind in this global economy, so the experts say. That has led to frantic middle and upper middle class parents buying all sorts of "learning" toys and feeling guilty that they aren't doing enough "floor time." And it's also led to a movement to prod states to fund programs that would teach low-income families how to play with their kids. (Studies have shown that low-income parents spend less time engaged in one-on-one play with their kids.)

In the Globe article, Lancy notes:

"In most cultures, 'adults think it is silly to play with children.'....[He also points out] that specialists behind the movement, who promote intense interventionist parenting styles to low-income parents, are too quick to claim that adult child play is crucial for human development....In much of the world, parents are unlikely to be the main caregivers, and Americans go overboard with structured parent-child play...

There are all kinds of social and cultural reasons for this impossible and silly standard of American parenting. We tend to have smaller families today so there are fewer kids to keep kids occupied. We're worried about safety so kids have less freedom to run around and tend to be supervised more. And there is more economic uncertainty and instability as the American economy has transitioned into a global, knowledge-based economy. Yup, I get all that.

But I'm hoping that Lancy's insights will some how filter into the mainstream and give American parents a bit of break from this impossible and nutty standard we've adopted. After all, most of us were not raised by parents who played Barbies with us. Turns out rest of the world wasn't either. Stumble It!