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Discusses childhood as a bridge between personal experience and culture, and outlines historians’ evidence sources, from diaries and letters to photographs, sociological studies, government reports, and popular-culture artifacts like toys and games. Explores how adult attitudes and family structures reshape play, notes changes in leisure and parenting, and examines whether declines in outdoor play are inevitable or historically contingent.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/play-and-the-history-of-american-childhood-an-interview-with-steven-mintz/591524/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/play-and-the-history-of-american-childhood-an-interview-with-steven-mintz/591524.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"supergirl","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-22","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":14},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How did Steven Mintz become interested in studying the history of childhood?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"He turned to the history of childhood less for abstract theory than for personal motives after his sons left childhood. He wanted to compare their childhood with his and earlier generations and understand what drives change.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What sources do historians use to study change in children’s play?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Historians look for change through primary sources such as diaries and letters, through sociological studies and government reports, and through visual sources like photographs. They also use artifacts of popular culture, including toys, games, children’s rhymes, and folklore.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"Why is it difficult to recover the history of play in full?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Material evidence about play has survived, but the hardest part to obtain is the meanings children attached to play. Many games, jokes, and stories have long histories, yet understanding their meanings requires more than surviving artifacts.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},591524,1792633360,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":14,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},962088121634,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_9964176cb1d06d4a9deccf72a44ae3dc","Play and the History of American Childhood  \nAn Interview with Steven Mintz  \nAn authority on the history of American children and families, Steven Mintz is a professor of history at Columbia University, where he also directs the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teaching Center. Previously, he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and the Moores Professor of History at the University of Houston, where he founded and directed that university’s American Cultures Program and served as an associate dean. He is the author or editor of thirteen books, including Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (1988) and Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (2004), which received the Organization ofAmerican Historians’ 2005 Merle Curti Award as the best book in American social history and the Association of American Publishers’ 2005 R. R. Hawkins Award as the best scholarly book. Among many other professional activities, Mintz is president of the Society for the History of Childhood and past president of H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences online. He has also served as national cochair of the Council on Contemporary Families, as chair of the Organization of American Historians’Teaching Committee, and on the advisory board of Film and History. He is the founder of the Digital History website ([www.digitalhistrory.uh.edu](www.digitalhistrory.uh.edu)), which is used by some one hundred thousand students and teachers each week. In this interview, Mintz discusses how Americans have regarded childhood and play, how our attitudes have changed over time, and how popular culture—particularly motion pictures but also other entertainment media—both reflect and affect our views of play.  \nAmerican Journal of Play: Professor Mintz, how did you come to study the history of childhood?  \nSteven Mintz: It’s an important subject. In American society, childhood is a key to understanding the transmission of class status, the construction of ethnic and gender identities, the development of a consumer economy, and the growth of a modern welfare state. In my view, childhood is one of the missing links between the personal and the cultural, between the discursive and the social. Childhood is a lived experience, an adult-defined status, and an ever-changing aspect of the life cycle.  \n© 2011 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois  \nAJP: Did you have other reasons as well?  \nMintz: Yes. In fact, I turned to the history of childhood less for abstract and theoretical reasons than out of personal motives. As my sons left childhood and entered young adulthood, I had questions I wanted to answer. I wanted to know how their childhoods had differed from mine and from those of preceding generations. I wanted to know if contemporary childhood was worse in some ways than childhood in the past. And I wanted to know what forces drive changes in the nature of childhood.  \nAJP: How do historians look for change in childhood and in children’s play?  \nMintz: We look for changes in play the same way we document other changes in life: through primary sources, such as diaries and letters; through other kinds of documentation, including sociological studies and government reports; and through visual sources, such as photographs. Then, too, there are useful artifacts of popular culture, including toys, games, children’s rhymes, and folklore.  \nAJP: Did you worry early on that some of that evidence would be hard to find?  \nMintz: Not really. A surprising amount of information about children’s play has survived. Precisely because adults have long been concerned about children’s play—often dismissing it as disorderly, devilish, or merely asa waste of time—we know a lot about how children spent their leisure time. Many material artifacts survive, too. What is hardest to get at is all the meanings that children have ascribed to play. Many children’s games, jokes, and stories have surp","cbCaim9NLEiciZ0H","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaim9NLEiciZ0H","pdf",158501,14,"English","# Interview Overview\n## Steven Mintz’s Background\n## Childhood, Class, and Identity\n## Methods: Finding Evidence of Change\n## Meanings of Play and Historical Diversity\n## Adult Memories and Historiography\n## Changes in Play in Contemporary America","[{\"question\":\"How did Steven Mintz become interested in studying the history of childhood?\",\"answer\":\"He turned to the history of childhood less for abstract theory than for personal motives after his sons left childhood. 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