playgrounds (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzanne Spencer-Wood.

Early-twentieth-century American reformers aimed to teach boys a feminized form of masculinity that was symbolized and materialized in supervised team games on playground ballfield landscapes. Organized play expressed new conceptions of childhood in a sequence of stages. Reformers organized team games to modify capitalist masculinity with what were considered feminine moral values of cooperation, fairness, and individual self-sacrifice for the greater good. Women became identified with these and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Renée M. Blackburn. Suzanne Spencer-Wood.

Playgrounds contributed to several domestic reform movements. Community mothering in playgrounds formed part of social settlements, the public cooperative housekeeping movement, and the municipal housekeeping movement. Playgrounds were also part of the public health reform movement and the Cult of Real Womanhood that promoted exercise  to strengthen the working class and to address the perception of women’s sickliness in the Cult of Invalidism. In the City Beautiful movement playgrounds and...