Playground’s Love

We’ve all been there- those playground marriages at recess time- where a friend officiates, another is the proud father- those playful bindings that resulted as the culmination of days, perhaps weeks, of relentless teasing. Later in the week, or perhaps even the same day’s afternoon- a sheet of scrap paper, whereupon closer inspection has revealed the messily scrawled word “diVorZ”. Those were the days where it was always a little boy, a little girl- bound together by the teasing of their friends. 

Although this might have been fun when we were young, I think this highlights two major issues with our society (at least within North America) today. Firstly, it shows the problem of how the construct of marriage is forced upon us from a young age, and we thusly carry that burden of needing to get married into the future subconsciously. There are a couple of different reasons for this, but the one that comes to mind the quickest is how these young children in quite literally primary school are already holding marriage rituals. When young children have that subconscious desire to continue with marriage- by simply caving into peer pressure/their understanding of love and to take it as “true love”- that’s when we know our society isn’t doing nearly enough to educate children about the potential dangers of rushing headfirst into dangerous areas like these. Secondly, we see how the marriage between these two young persons is always, without the shadow of a doubt, between a boy and a girl (remember that these are extremely young children, often in grades 1-5). The fact that we as a society are at the point where all LGBTQ+ relationships have little to no representation in these younger people shows, at the very least, a clear lack of education from both formal schooling and parents. 

When these playground marriages inevitably end in “divorce”, the children are mercilessly teased for the rest of their time at that school- “Jimmy’s ex”. The cultural stigma surrounding divorce in today’s society is also reflected in these divorces. Somehow, being previously “married” or “dating” someone on the playground becomes something of guilt, a thing of the past- something to be ashamed of. The issue here is mainly that it shows our stigmas around being divorced, and divorcees in society tend to be ostracized more than those married. The word divorce is something that is taken as inherently bad- as everything wrong with society. When these children are acting upon that distorted perception of divorce, it shows how our education system has failed them- how their main understanding of divorce comes from perhaps TV shows, movies, or songs rather than formal schooling or their parents. 

The children’s playground is a call to action, both as a metaphor and as a juxtaposition of our society today. When we put the children’s playground side-by-side with the real world- it’s clear that most of these playground marriages/playground divorces stem from a young child’s perception of the world surrounding them. It shows fundamental flaws within our education system- where children learn the “traditional” heterosexual marriage without any understanding of other sexualities and society’s biases towards divorcees. When the construct of marriage is pushed onto children and divorces become stigmatized- that’s the point where our society needs to change. Somehow, primary school children have exposed the deeper flaws of our society. By changing the education system- by educating parents- only then can the flaws of our society be reversed. Through playground love- we can solve the underlying societal problems. 

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