Space for play? Families' strategies for organizing domestic space in homes with young children

Stevenson, O. and Prout, A. (2013) Space for play? Families' strategies for organizing domestic space in homes with young children. Home Cultures, 10(2), pp. 135-158. (doi: 10.2752/175174213X13589680718490)

Abstract

This article discusses how children, toys, and play are accommodated in the spaces of the contemporary home in order to highlight the often overlooked connections between home as an imaginative space and housing as a physical location in which people reside. We do this by exploring how families in private, new-build homes in contemporary Scotland reconfigure domestic space through the creation of a new kind of internal domestic space—the “toy room.” Analysis leads to a consideration of how the rules and routines of homemaking join people, places, and things together or deliberately separate them out. We conclude that the emergence of the toy room is an improvised solution to a problem exacerbated by the growth of children’s consumption of toys and playthings, shrinking room size, limited flexibility of the available space, and the shortage of storage in new-build homes, as well as a domestic aesthetic ideal adverse to clutter.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Stevenson, Dr Olivia
• Authors: Stevenson, O., and Prout, A.
• Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General); H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General); H Social Sciences > HM Sociology; L Education > L Education (General); T Technology > T Technology (General)
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences > Geography
• Journal Name: Home Cultures
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• ISSN: 1740-6315
• ISSN (Online): 1751-7427