The medicalization of children’s play in American hospitals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Abstract

ABSTRACTChildren’s play in American hospitals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries underwent a process of medicalization, gradually transforming from primarily diversionary recreational activities supervised by volunteers to therapeutic programs implemented by professionals. By the 1970s, the child-life profession, rooted in developmental psychology, had emerged as an allied health profession whose purpose was to counteract the dehumanizing influence of modern, technocratic hospitals on child patients. The spread of therapeutic play programs into specialized health care settings and the continued enthusiastic support of the American Academy of Pediatrics demonstrate how thorough the processes of medicalization have been.