An Indigenous perspective of the symbiotic relationship between play and household chores

An Indigenous perspective of the symbiotic relationship between play and household chores

The role of play in children's development has been a key focus for developmental scientist (Burriss and Tsao, 2002). In this perspective, we focus on the experiences of Yucatec Maya children as they engage in unstructured playful learning activities while participating in their family's household chores. By focusing on the playful learning experiences of Indigenous children, this perspective builds on the current literature on play (e.g., Ergler, 2020; Fleer and Hedegaard, 2010; Zosh et al., 2018) and the seminal work of Gaskins (2015) on the culturally situated conceptualization of children's play. However, Indigenous views on children's play are often missing from the current literature and when included might be frame from a deficit perspective due to the limited presence of material toys and adult-structured play activities (Bolin, 2006; Roopnarine and Davidson, 2015). Therefore, in this perspective, we build on the current understanding of play and elaborating on three key aspects of play: (1) the symbiotic relationship between play and household chores; (2) the community's respect for children's autonomy; and (3) integration of children into culturally relevant activities to promote learning and development. Based on ethnographic data and acknowledgment of our personal experiences, we propose that play, and household chores have a symbiotic relationship that serve as the core learning experiences of Indigenous children's development. Because this perspective includes a personal reflection on the authors' childhood experiences, we start with a positionality statement.

Positionality statement

Both authors were born and grew up in an Indigenous-heritage rural town, Purépecha. Alcalá immigrated to southern California at the age of 14 and Díaz Lara immigrated to a rural community in Oregon at the age of 11 years old.

Looking back at our own childhood, we find it difficult to separate the household chores we did from the hours we spent playing as both were woven into nearly every aspect of our childhood. Despite material limitations, those years felt expansive: full of joy, movement, freedom, and a deep sense of belonging. From an early age, we took on a wide range of household chores including caring for babies, fetching water from the local well, milking the cows, washing clothes in the nearby creek (which was a lot of fun for us and our friends, as we could also swim there), washing dishes, sweeping, moping, and learning to cook.

Reflecting on our early experiences with household chores, we do not recall these experiences as work, but rather as fun playful activities. The contributions we made to our family was rarely done alone. Siblings and friends accompanied one another on errands around town and at home with household chores, turning quotidian tasks into fun social experiences. Through these activities, we also established our reputation as responsible hard workers, resulting in work opportunities around the neighborhood to earn extra cash.

Understandings children's play experiences

Play is defined as enjoyable activities in which children have choice and autonomy over and is currently viewed as a spectrum that ranges from “unstructured or free play” to “adult-structured” activities (Fisher et al., 2008; Goodhall and Atkinson, 2019; Zosh et al., 2018). Vygotsky (1978) viewed play as a critical aspect of children's cognitive and social development that was influenced by cultural context. For example, he argued that during pretend play, children create imaginary situations, take on social roles, and follow rules associated with those roles, which are influenced by their cultural context. Through these experiences, children develop self-regulation, problem-solving skills, language, and abstract thinking. Additionally, according to Vygotsky, play creates a zone of proximal development (ZPD) allowing children to perform at a higher level than they typically would in everyday situations with support from more knowledgeable peers (MKP).

Until recently, what we know about the contributions of play to children's development has been based, in great part, on the experiences of children from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) communities, where play is viewed as the main childhood occupation (Göncü et al., 1999; Henrich et al., 2010). For example, in a recent special issue on play and executive function skills, the authors note the need to include diverse samples (non-WEIRD) to reflect the play experiences of children from the Global South (Eberhart et al., 2023). Considering only the characteristics and forms of play based on the experiences of children from WEIRD communities in the Global North runs the risk of an incomplete understanding of play, and a disservice to the field.

The symbiotic relationships between play and household chores

Play activities serve as the context for all children to practice and master key developmental skills, such as social negotiations, to supports cognitive, social, language, and emotional development, that are valued in their respective cultural communities (Göncü and Gaskins, 2010; Gaskins et al., 2007). Similarly, Gaskins (2014) argues that play is a culturally constructed activity and therefore, the alleged benefits associated with children's play cannot be detangled from the unique characteristics of play, which in Indigenous communities include emulating household chores.

In many Indigenous communities, play and household chores have a relationship, functioning as interconnected and symbiotic rather than separate activities. Instead of learning household responsibilities primarily through direct adult instruction, young children have plenty of opportunities to observe family and community members and voluntarily participate in everyday activities such as cooking, cleaning, caring for younger siblings, gathering food, or tending animals. Children are always present and observe adults doing their daily activities, and learn from observing how to complete tasks, collaborate with siblings and peers, and gradually take responsibility for meaningful tasks Alcalá and Cervera, (2022). At the same time, play provides opportunities to learn culturally valued skills, allowing children to practice cooperation, observation, problem-solving, and responsibility in ways that prepare them for increasingly complex contributions to family and community life. Play and household chores mutually reinforce one another, supporting children's development while facilitating the intergenerational transmission of cultural knowledge and values.

The ethnographic record demonstrates that children in Indigenous and Indigenous-heritage communities engage in play activities as much as in activities such as household chores (Lancy, 1996). Play activities in Indigenous communities might not fit with the traditional expectations of play, which for the most part rely on verbal instructions and takes place in structured adult-led activities and mini-lessons framed as playful learning (Rogoff, 2003; Rogoff et al., 1993). Furthermore, children in many Indigenous communities are not only engaging in play activities but they also decide their daily agendas, managing their own play endeavors, while also contributing to their families by engaging in household chores including cleaning tasks, running errands, helping with gardens, and contributing to parents' work (Coppens et al., 2014). Research on Indigenous communities in Mexico and elsewhere in the Americas emphasizes that children's development occurs through active participation in the everyday practices such as household chores of their communities (Cardoso, 2015).

Yucatec maya children's play: respect for autonomy

To add to our understanding of play, we provide a description of Yucatec Maya children's play activities based on empirical comparative and ethnographic data. The data were collected by Alcalá during multiple visits to several communities in the Yucatec peninsula since 2014, including a 2-year field-work ethnography and a 6-month stay during the Fall 2022. In addition to the ethnographic data, Alcalá and colleagues also conducted semi-structured interviews with children, parents, grandparents, teachers and community leaders during the Spring 2024. The resulting data corpus informs this perspective including the concept of the symbiotic relationship between play and household chores.

In the Yucatec Maya community, as in many Indigenous and Indigenous-heritage communities, children have recurring access to observing almost all the ongoing activities at home and in the community. Infants and toddlers (0–3 years old) are allowed to experience the full range of emotions and sensory information that set the foundation to become competent members of their community, entering an intricate web of social relations and responsibilities. Yucatec mothers reported that as soon as children can sit by themselves (around 6-months) they can start learning, you can sit them next to you when you are doing chores, and by the age of 1 when they start to walk, children can help at home with simple tasks such as picking up their toys or fetching something for the parents (Alcalá and Cervera, 2022). These intentional practices support the nascent development of infants' agency, keen attention, and sense of belonging (Cervera, 2016; De León Pasquel, 2005; Lancy, 1996).

During early childhood (4–6 year old), children continue to engage in a variety of household chores and play with parents reporting that when a child engages in plays, they demonstrate a healthy development. Young children spend a significant portion of their time with older children, learning games and helping with simple chores. Children at this age are also trusted to run errands to the nearby store (usually with a note from the parent), deliver a message to the neighbor, or help feed the chickens in the patio.

During middle-childhood (7–10 years old), Yucatec Maya children spend significant portion of their out-of-school time contributing to household chores and engaging in unstructured play (Gaskins, 2000, 2006). Yucatec Maya children have the autonomy to manage their daily agendas, decide when to play, including where and with whom. Play activities include informal, and formal play, in mixed-aged groups. Pretend play is characteristic of children's games in Yucatan, reflecting typical work activities, such as using a discarded piece of plastic bag to pretend to making tortillas (Gaskins, 2013). Rarely, if ever, you would find adults playing with children, as this is considered a task for siblings and cousins. Adults respect children's play activities even when they do not fully agree with these. One example is the game of ‘pesca pesca' in which children go to the monte (forest) and capture wild birds (Uc Keb and Cervera, 2014). Parents do not approve of this activity as this could be dangerous for children and adults do not approve of children keeping birds in cages. However, parents respect the child's decision and provide advice as to why this is not acceptable to them, but ultimately, it is the child's prerogative to play this game or not.

In the Yucatec Maya communities play is understood as a marker of children's health, development of autonomy, and overall wellbeing (Gaskins, 2015). Children's agency in household chores as well as in other play activities is respected and supported. This reflects the community's development expectations and goals for children and the trust in their developing agency. However, play itself is not viewed as a direct contributor to children's development. The line between play and household chores is blurry and difficult to identify, as children often finding ways to integrate play activities and playfulness into their daily chores (Bazyk et al., 2003). But again, parents do not actively encourage or discourage children's play, and when parents ask for children's help, children see their contributions as part of their enjoyable activities and therefore children usually complied (Gaskins, 2015).

In contrast to the substantial contributions that Yucatec maya children make through their engagement to household chores, in many WEIRD communities around the world, children tend to have fewer opportunities to observe adults' work and to engage in activities that contribute to the household (Coppens and Rogoff, 2022; Henrich et al., 2010). Children in these WEIRD communities often rely on adults to structure their play activities, manage their agendas, their attention, and to create artificial play choices for them, providing practice with dyadic social interactions between adult and children.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the culturally constructed play activities for children around the world and challenged the ground rules of family life. (Alcalá et al. 2021a) found that in a middle-class community in Southern California, the pandemic drastically impacted the play activities available to children by eliminating the two main play spaces, school and adult-organized extra-curricular activities. This unexpected change forced parents to take the role of playmates, seeking alternatives to supplement their children's limited play activities, such as arranging virtual playdates, resulting in increased parental stress (Alcalá et al., 2021a). Yucatec Maya children's play was not impacted—as they were able to continue to play with siblings, cousins, and close neighbors. Children easily integrated into the ongoing activities of the family, helping extended family members with agricultural work, household chores, and tending livestock. Yucatec Maya children are autonomous actors in their everyday worlds who become socially embedded in reciprocal responsibilities to members of their extended family and legitimate participants in family work (Gaskins, 2020). These examples illustrated the importance of children's autonomy in managing their agendas and their involvement in unstructured play and work to aid their development as responsible contributing members of their communities.

Development through the symbiotic relationship of play and household chores

Unstructured play documented extensively in Indigenous communities as a key component of optimal development, supports cognitive and social development in alignment with culturally situated developmental goals (Rogoff, 2003; Vygotsky, 1978). Research in the United States (U.S.A.) also shows that children's engagement in unstructured play supports their cognitive skills, such as self-directed executive function skills, behavioral and attentional self-regulation skills, as children organize and manage the activities and are likely to practice these skills during unstructured play (Alcalá, 2023; Barker et al., 2014; Barker and Munakata, 2015). Additionally, when children are allowed to manage their daily agendas, they are more likely to engage in planning and problem-solving (Coppens et al., 2014).

Because household chores and play are seen as symbiotic in many Indigenous communities, household chores are not viewed as something to avoid or to be done to receive a reward, and joy is often reported as the result of engaging in productive activities (Bolin, 2006). Over the past decade of fieldwork in Yucatán, Alcalá observed children take part in activities where learning, play, and contributing to their households naturally overlap (Alcalá et al., 2021b). These observations have shaped how we think about play: not as something separate, but as an intertwined way to facilitate children's development in their process of becoming contributing members of their communities. For example, in an Indigenous-heritage community, taking the initiative to help with household chores at home was correlated with children's planning skills and prosocial behavior (Alcalá et al., 2018). Being integrated into all spheres of the community life provides children with ample opportunities to observe and learn from others, with the entire community functioning as their playground to promote socioemotional development (Rogoff and Mejía-Arauz, 2022). The social aspect of work brings joy to children, supports their role in the family, and encouraging helping with these activities (Lee, 1987). Yucatec Maya children reported helping with household chores because they like to help, or because they find the work fun or entertaining and take pride in contributing to their family's chores (Alcalá et al., 2021a). Furthermore, when children are allowed to move around the community and take the initiative, they also learn specialized skills such as the use of medicinal plants (Jiménez-Balam and Alcalá, 2023) or learn to become vernacular architects (Cervera, 2022).

Based on Alcala's ethnographic work with Indigenous communities and our own childhood experiences, distinguishing household chores from play is complicated, as children enjoy and have fun when working and work in done in the company of others. In the case of the Yucatec Maya, participating in household chores is crucial for their developing role as they become contributing members of their community (Gaskins, 2020). Household chores as play provides children with opportunities to develop social and cognitive skills. For example, when children help with household chores in the family garden or corn fields, they also access the wealth of community knowledge acquire new ways of relating to nature and their surroundings, and in the process, they learn the worldview and cultural models of their community (Alcalá et al., under review)¹. In fact, according to Indigenous epistemologies, household chores are not only a developmentally appropriate activity for children but are crucial as it is through these activities that children are able to learn and develop (Cardoso, 2015). In fact, in the Mixe language it is impossible to talk about learning and development without discussing work.

This alternative conceptualization of household chores as playful learning centers the Indigenous epistemological framework that privileges children's agency as they are fully integration into the many folds of their community's social fabric. This is illustrated by the autonomy Yucatec Maya children have in managing their daily routines as they effortlessly balance household chores with play. When communities respect and support children's agency, children are allowed to engage in exploratory practice, become interested, and eventually take the initiative to create their own ecologies of learning (de León, 2015).

Discussion

Children in Indigenous communities, are included in almost all types of activities, and have the agency to decide when to engage in these activities. The evidence presented in this perspective can contribute to a broader understanding of play as a dynamic and culturally situated activity (Gaskins, 2015) and the need to move beyond the current Western-Eurocentric view of play. Play is a cultural construction, and it should be studied and understood within the broader cultural context of children's lives (Gaskins, 2014). This includes exploring the symbiotic relationship of play and household chores as a critical part of Indigenous children's learning and development. Additionally, play as a culturally situated activity, advocates for a more inclusive view of children's development across diverse cultural contexts.

Recognizing that play and household chores as culturally symbiotic situated activities can have implications for spaces aimed at fostering children's learning and development in non-indigenous communities. In educational, community, and family settings, activities can be organized by building in children's collaborative and autonomous strengths and cultural knowledge and provided multiple opportunities for autonomy in their choices. However, the sophisticated learning skills displayed by Indigenous and Indigenous-heritage children as a result of their integration into household chores can be misunderstood by those who are less familiar with this way of organizing children's social environments leading to imposing these social interactions frameworks (e.g., teachers, researchers). Therefore, researchers should be mindful to not impose a social interaction framework based on WEIRD communities which can be violent to minoritized families (Rogoff et al., 2017) or relying on decontextualized cognitive measures (e.g., executive function tasks) and treat scores as stable traits rather than context-sensitive performance, culturally patterned ways of engaging can be misinterpreted as evidence of poor self-regulation or low school readiness, reinforcing inequitable educational opportunities (Miller-Cotto et al., 2026).

The evidence provided in this perspective urge the field of developmental sciences to recognize children's involvement in household chores and play as activities that are developmentally and culturally appropriate (Gaskins, 2013, 2015). Indigenous children's household contributions fulfill the six-principles of playful learning: active, social, joyful, engaging, provide meaningful contributions as children learn real-life skills. Indigenous communities see household chores as not only important for children's development but as a primary path into it. Household chores are understood as meaningful participation in family and community life, a means to learning to be a responsible member of the community, and it is often experienced as enjoyable and socially embedded: children learn through close interactions with others by observation and collaborative practices (Alcalá and Cervera, 2022; Rogoff and Mejía-Arauz, 2022). The symbiotic relationship of play and work is evident in children's eagerness to join ongoing tasks, their joyful engagement while helping, and their motivation to contribute in ways that affirm belonging and strengthen community ties.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Karyn Allee, Mercer University, United States

Reviewed by: Sirada Rochanavibhata, San Francisco State University, United States

Tenna Doktor Olsen Tvedebrink, Aalborg University, Denmark

Footnotes

Alcalá, L., Jiménez Balam, D. P., and Kú Martánez, M. V. (under review). Contribuir y aprender: El desarrollo de conocimientos tradicionales sobre el entorno natural entre nińas y nińos mayas yucatecos. Unpublished Manuscript.