engleski

Foretelling Games of Polish and Croatian Girls

Every culture has also those cultural constructs where children and young adults appear as creators, mediators and transmitters (games, jokes, stories, magic, teasing verses, foretelling games, autographs books, etc.). This paper discusses and interesting genre from that circle: foretelling games. Products of children`s subculture that, in a form of a children tradition, are carried down from one generation to another can be objects of investigation of various disciplines. This paper looks into the role of foretelling games in children`s development, especially in girl`s socialisation. A great degre of similarity between children`s games in the world in partly explained by the fact that those games fulfil similar developmental needs of children. In the comparision between the children`s games in Croatia and New Zealand (Duran, 2000.) it was determined that girls, around the age of ten, develop such games in which they look for answers to questions such as: who will you marry, where are young going to live, how many children are you going to have etc. This paper compares foretelling games between Polish and Croatian girls and investigates their role in girl`s socialisation and process of growing up.

children`s subculture; children`s development; games

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