Research is child's play

Were children’s lives freer in the 1950s than they are today? Was their play shaped by the different types of houses, schools and neighbourhoods of the post-war era?

Carla Pascoe is exploring these questions in a PhD jointly supported by Museum Victoria and the University of Melbourne. The project emerged from a unique archive that the museum houses and a desire to provide a context for this collection. Called the Australian Children’s Folklore Collection, it includes the research notes of Dorothy Howard, an American folklorist who came to Australia in 1954-5 to study children’s play in schoolyards across the nation. After visiting dozens of schools and receiving scores of letters, Howard amassed thousands of examples of Australian children’s games, songs, chants, rhymes, taunts, superstitions and jokes.

But without historical context, we cannot understand the kind of world in which these children lived. Pascoe’s PhD research seeks to paint a detailed picture of what it was like to grow up in Melbourne in the 1950s – an era in which children were central to dreams of Australia’s future.

Adults desperately wanted to create a better world for their children after suffering through the Second World War. Parents, teachers, architects and urban planners debated the best physical environments in which to raise children. They worried about the ‘slum’ areas of the inner city with their decrepit housing and ‘dirty streets’. They aspired to live the Australian dream of inhabiting suburban family homes on quarter-acre-blocks on the edges of the city.

Pascoe’s thesis traces perspectives on the best types of homes for children, and she compares these views to the opinions of children who grew up in the fifties. Often, the views of adults and children were very different.

While urban planners tried to drain creeks, pave roads and build freeways in the new suburbs, it seems kids preferred wilder neighbourhoods. They would rather play along creek banks and in paddocks than on neat play equipment. Home magazines encouraged parents to build elaborate cubby houses, pools, and sandpits in their backyards. But Pascoe’s research suggests fifties’ children just wanted the space to build their own hiding places and create their own games.

School designs often focused on creating classrooms that appeared best suited to learning. Yet, to children, school was about much more than formal curriculum. The lessons of friendship and the humble rituals of everyday life were just as significant.

Pascoe’s PhD research, which complements her part-time curatorial role with the Childhood Collection, is just one of a number of research projects that are carried on behind-the-scenes at Museum Victoria. Whilst the public often only see the exhibitions that are on display, the Museum has an equally vital research role. Whether in history or science, the Museum has a range of links with different universities, supporting a vast number of research projects and providing access to its collections for interested scholars.