Racism // Statistics // Outdoors

COVID-19.

The Novel Coronavirus.

A new strain of a virus led to a new normal.

Except, not really. I am the stay at home mother to three children all of whom are under the age in which school is mandatory. My eldest was enrolled in and attended preschool less than ten school days before school was cancelled for the remainder of the school year, so I know a thing or two about having the kids at home. In addition, I hate driving, so while we occasionally venture out of the house, it is not usually out of the neighborhood.

While studying child development and child psychopathology, I've learned a lot about the needs of a child and best practices. In all the books about child-rearing, the blogs about parenting, and the research articles about child development, there is nothing that truly prepared me for parenting.

The first thing I did was throw out the rigid schedule. My eldest thrives on routine, so we do the same things in the same order, but the activities are flexible and so are the times. I've found that picture routines and other reminders can work for some, but are a hindrance to others. Individualization is such an important part of childhood.

What I struggle with the most is flexibility and grace. I enjoy a clean house, and ironically, I've found the messier the boys get, the cleaner the house is. How? Independent play and outside time. My secret arsenal of play that allows me the time, space, and energy to get everything done that I need. In the past six months I have drastically reduced the screen time for the boys and increased independent play just by letting them out of the house.

Outside play gets easier, just like reduced screen time gets easier.

Over the past six months we have been outside for over 500 hours. In June alone, we were outside for over 170 hours. Our first month outside we spent less than an hour a day outside.

Outdoor free play is a privilege. It is a privilege I didn't know that I had.

In early childhood, race is a factor in who plays outside. Birken and colleagues did a study of preschoolers where they found that, “increased outdoor play may be associated with access to green space, being white, being male, having multiple playmates, and having a mother who does not work full time” (2018, 445). People who live in urban environments, who are minorities, and whose parents cannot afford to stay home are less likely to go outside.

There is a racial disparity in who visits the national parks and forests. According to a 2018 study from the US Forest Department, 94.6% of their visitors were non-Hispanic whites, who made up just 62.6% of the population in the 2010 census (Flores et al., 2018). The group with the fewest visits were people who identified as Black or African American.

Contributing to the iisue is a lack of representation in many outdoor sports which is reflected in sports publications who typically feature people who are white on the covers. The perception influences action which affects diversity (Lee et al., 2016). 

In conclusion, the lack of representation, lack of childhood experiences in the outdoors, the historical segregation and abuse of minorities in outdoor spaces, and a lack of access to these spaces all contribute to the racial disparity in the outdoors. Though racial disparity in the outdoors is not the most egregious avenue of systemic racism, it is real, and we need to do better.

References:

Birken, C. S., Maguire, J. L., Lau, E., Laupacis, A., Parkin, P. C., Salter, M., Szatmari, P., Weir,
S., Abdullah, K., Aglipay, M., Ali, Y., Anderson, L. N., Bayoumi, I., Birken, C. S., Borkhoff, C. M., Carsley, S., Chen, S., Chen, Y., Dai, D. W. H., … Birken, C. S. (2018). Temperament Is Associated With Outdoor Free Play in Young Children: A TARGet Kids! Study. Academic Pediatrics, 18(4), 445–451. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2017.08.006

Flores, D., Falco, G., Roberts, N. S., & Valenzuela, F. P. (2018, May). Recreation Equity: Is the Forest Service Serving Its Diverse Publics? Journal of Forestry. 116(3): 266-272. doin: 10.1093/jofore/fvx016

Lee K, Mowatt R, Goff K, Novotny C, Rivin A, Walter A. (2016). The perceptions and reflections of racial/ethnic diversity in the outdoors. Journal of Cultural Diversity 23(4):158-164.