Boys' Play: Wrestling


Figure 1.--Here we see two boys, presumably brothers having a spirit wrestling bout in their back yard. The image is unidentfied, but I think they were German boys in the 1960s. The boys look to be wearing lederhosen.

Boys from the very dawn of humanity have wrestled with each other. We know that because we not only see adult animals cometing with each other, but see amimal youngsters including the great apes, engaged in wrestling and other rough play. For that matter in animals that are born in litters, the fetal animals compete with each other for improved blood supply. That is why there are runts in litters. Thus it is not surprising that children compete. and wrestling and other rough play is one way this occurs. Now we do not see girls wrestling to any extent for both genetic and cultural reasons. For boys it is a different matter. Wrestling and rough play is an activity that occurs naturally. Now this has changed over time. Not the inherent tendency for the boys to wrestle has changed, but the willingness for parents to allow it, especially moms. Children are now more closely supervised than ever before in history. I can recall as a boy in the 1940s-50s that during the summer, that I and my brother would have breakfast and then disappear until lunch and then disappear gain until dinnertime. I don't recall mom asking where we were going, at least not very commonly. Today commonly mom or teachers as part of modern close supervision step in to prevent rough play, but before say the 1970s, children were much more likely to play on their own upsupervised, especially school age boys. Of course by secondary age, boys can participate in wrestling as a sanctioned sport. An American reder writes, "the photo here photo evokes memories from the 1960s of coming home from school , getting out of my school clothes , changing into dungarees and going out on the front lawn to wrestle with the neighbor boy. As a kid I loved watching pro wrestling on TV as did most of the boys in the neighborhood. When we would wrestle we would become our favorite wrestler."









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Created: 9:37 PM 10/8/2017
Last updated: 8:10 PM 10/9/2017