When it first appeared in 1993, Barrie Thorne’s Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School became an instant classic in the budding fields of feminist sociology and childhood studies. Through detailed first-hand observations of fourth and fifth graders at play, she investigated questions like: Why do girls and boys tend to self-segregate in the schoolyard? What can playful teasing and ritualized games like “cooties” and “chase and kiss” teach us about how children perform gendered identities? And how do children articulate their own conceptions of gender, distinct from those proscribed by the adult world? A detailed and perceptive ethnography told with compassion and humor, Gender Play immerses readers in the everyday lives of a group of working-class children to examine the social interactions that shape their gender identities. This new Rutgers Classic edition of Gender Play contains an introduction from leading sociologists of gender Michael A. Messner and Raewyn Connell that places Thorne’s innovative research in historical context. It also includes a new afterword by one of Thorne’s own students, acclaimed sociologist C.J. Pascoe, reflecting on both the lasting influence of Thorne’s work and the ways that American children’s understandings of gender have shifted in the past thirty years.
