Fritidens institutionalisering och den moderna barndomen

Abstract

Institutionalisation of Leisure and the Modern Childhood This article is based on the thesis City Children at the Countryside – Stockholm Summer Camps and Modern Welfare. A central question is how the Swedish holiday camp movement influenced the creation of a new childhood with a new content. The first summer camp holiday in Sweden was organized 1883. The journey made with schoolchildren from one of the Stockholm public schools out into the archipelago marks the beginning of a new sphere of activity within both the philanthropic sphere – the child saving movement – and in the area of preventive medicine. A central idea was that all children were entitled to a good summer holiday. The purpose was to improve the physical and moral health of the working-class children. The participating children would be taught good customs of the upper classes and acquire a new behaviour. This would gradually change, improve and normalize the population with time. However, it is important to problematise this image and discuss whether the ideas could be realized out of the camps. Norms and values, for example, who were expected to be dominant, proved in practice to give way to the children’s own cultural order.