In Defense of Recess

Why Recess Matters: The Importance of Unstructured Play and How to Fight for It, by Catherine Ramstetter (Parenting Press, 272 pp., $21.99)

Youth sports, once the redoubt of aimless childhood play, have become hopelessly commercialized. A recent article by Caitlin Moscatello in New York shows how parents seeking old-fashioned play for their kids instead find themselves sucked into an all-consuming, pay-to-play industry.

The appeal of childhood athletics is not mysterious, particularly today. Youth obesity is rising, and children spend increasing hours sedentary and online. But must providing such seemingly basic goods come at such a cost? Organized sports should not be the only opportunity children have to move their bodies, build friendships, resolve conflicts, and test a degree of independence from adults.

Catherine Ramstetter’s new book, Why Recess Matters: The Importance of Unstructured Play and How to Fight for It, is thus particularly timely. Ramstetter, a longtime recess researcher and advocate, investigates this frequently underestimated source of many of the benefits parents are seeking through costly organized sports.

Her argument is not just that children need more exercise. In fact, she insists that the value of recess lies partly in what distinguishes it from basketball practice, gym class, or virtually every other scheduled activity in a modern child’s life: it is child-directed. Adults don’t decide how children play. Children run, invent games, climb, talk, negotiate disagreements, or simply dawdle with friends. The time belongs, within reasonable limits, to them.

Drawing on decades of scholarship, real-world stories, and international case studies, Ramstetter shows that recess supports not only physical health but attention, learning, social development, friendship, emotional regulation, creativity, and conflict resolution. She traces how recess came to occupy its often-precarious place in American schools, examines the research, and considers practices that undermine the activity’s benefits—like the misguided idea of withholding recess as punishment.

But the book is not merely a pitch for giving children another 20 minutes on the blacktop. Halfway through, Ramstetter shifts from explaining why recess matters to what good recess looks like. She evaluates everything from multiple recess periods and middle school breaks to playground design, inclusive spaces, equipment, and supervision. Quality matters, she suggests, as much as quantity. A barren asphalt lot offering nothing to do is one thing; a thoughtfully designed space in which different personalities can find different ways to play is another.

Ramstetter’s primary audience is the same group beleaguered by the youth-sports industrial complex: parents. Each chapter closes with “Takeaways for Parents” and a “Game Plan” for how families can work with schools to improve recess. The book concludes by describing how some parents have done just that. For all the research Ramstetter presents, Why Recess Matters is ultimately as much a book about parental agency as it is about playgrounds.

In recent years, American parents have become conspicuously interested in what happens during the school day. The Covid-19 pandemic played a key role here: with months of kitchen-table classrooms and remote learning, parents gained valuable insight into their children’s education. After the pandemic ended, many decided they wanted to stay closely involved.

That shift was perhaps captured most memorably during a 2021 gubernatorial debate in Virginia, when former Governor Terry McAuliffe uttered a sentence that quickly became notorious: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” The remark mobilized a horde of parents who evidently disagreed.

What followed has been variously described as a parental awakening or a parents’ rights movement. It has taken the form of greater involvement in school-board politics, but also of growing interest in school-choice options like charter schools, homeschooling, and hybrid programs.

Beneath the sometimes-contentious debates that followed was a simpler and less partisan development: parents were asking more questions about what happens at school—and increasingly seeking a role in shaping it. All of which makes recess a surprisingly fitting next frontier for parental involvement.

Of course, improving recess won’t shake up the youth-sports industrial complex that Moscatello and others have documented. Nor is a half-hour of hopscotch a substitute for taking swimming lessons or playing little league or for a beloved soccer team—especially if your child really is the next Erling Haaland.

But Ramstetter raises questions about how much we’ve come to rely on organized activities. If children reliably had time of their own each day to burn energy, make friends, invent games, take manageable risks, negotiate disputes, and experience some freedom from adult direction, would parents feel as much pressure to purchase those other experiences—and the personal trainers and professional photo shoots that come with them?

There’s something refreshing about play itself becoming a parents’ cause. It offers families an opportunity to move beyond the ideological battles that have dominated the education conversation since 2020 and focus instead on something children of all backgrounds need: time to move, socialize, and simply be kids.