The knife-dispensing strategy may appear to some as an oversight that keeps the local hospital bustling with injured kids in summer. On the contrary. Injecting a dose of risk into children’s free-ranging fun is a feature, not a bug. The nature-based playground offers a litany of ways for children to get bruised, bumped, scratched and dirty. There are trees to climb, brambly branches to rearrange, tricycles to ride (often into each other), a play pond to stumble into, then trails to get lost in far from nosy parents. Adult chaperones may fret about lurking hazards, but their peace of mind is secondary. “It’s children who need to be aware of every step they take,” says Helle Nebelong, a former Copenhagen city official who designed the place at the turn of the century. “They must take responsibility for their own safety.” A cadre of young staff are there to catalyse play rather than stymie it. Playgrounds the world over have done their utmost to eliminate risk. Why expose children to injuries, even minor ones, if they can be avoided? From Tokyo to Toronto, childhood play has thus become enveloped in well- meaning bubble-wrap. Any adult who has visited a play area they frequented as a child can see how anything that might cause so much as a grazed knee or a soiled skirt has been done away with. Asphalt and dirt have been replaced by vast expanses of rubberised carpets. Tree branches that might tempt intrepid youths have been cut down. In their stead, standardised equipment picked out of a catalogue—a few tame slides, some swings and a climbing frame—are erected. This cookie-cutter approach delights fretful municipal officials fearing lawsuits and criticism from health-and-safety bureaucrats. Alas, it bores kids to tears. No wonder they beg for screens instead. Mariana Brussoni, a childhood expert at the University of British Columbia, decries “an epidemic of anxiety-based parenting” for the trend towards duller and safer play. In past generations families with a dozen kids had little choice but to let them roam free. These days smaller broods are the norm, and so more adult attention has been bestowed on fewer kids. This has led to an outbreak of “parenting” whereby children need to be cultivated rather than left to their own devices (no, not smartphones). In well-off circles, giving sprogs time and space to just be themselves or mess about with friends—ie play—is seen as an indulgence. Instead, they must be shuttled from school to ballet classes to fencing, before homework. What time is
allocated to unstructured fun is mostly spent in playgrounds under watchful grown-ups’ eyes. This avoids a few scratches and bumps along the way—but at what cost? “If you protect children too much, you rob them of experiences that will make them safer and happier,” says Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter at Queen Maud University College in Trondheim, Norway. Kids are well equipped to know what daring swing or lunge would thrill them most, and to learn from their mistakes. Playground safety should be about the sturdiness of the equipment, not the way it comes to be used. As for a little dirt, what harm can it do? In fact, recent research from Finland shows wallowing in soil has wondrous effects on small immune systems. Giving children this benefit of the doubt still prevails in Scandinavia. There, playgrounds are seen as a practice arena in which kids get “the tickle in their stomach” from taking risks, as Prof Sandseter puts it—whether it be riding a bike a bit too fast, climbing up to the next branch or playing with knives. Sometimes the approach boggles foreign minds. “Construction playgrounds” sprang up in Denmark after the second world war, with open-air areas filled with discarded junk that children could shape into multi-storey houses, with saws or nails or whatever they saw fit. Two traditions anchor a culture of Nordic risky play. The first is the ancestral habit of playing in nature—by its essence a place of untamed risks. But more recent social norms have a role, too. Stay-at-home parents are rare, leaving fewer mothers to interfere with kid-only time. It is frowned upon to ferry even the youngest to school if they can walk or cycle there themselves. Across Europe, but unlike America, there is no culture of litigation in case risky play results in a broken arm. Free health care means a broken bone is a nuisance, not a financial burden. Keen to explore these Scandinavian ways, The Economist secured the services of four playground afficionados—your columnist’s three boys and their cousin, aged eight to 12. Left to their own wits in Valbyparken while their father disappeared to interview Ms Nebelong, the knife-wielding gang soon secured equipment to cook flatbreads on an open-flame pit. Later in a construction playground across town they deftly navigated rusty nails and discarded furniture in search of new adventures (some sawing required).
Might injuries have resulted, a pinched finger or a sprained ankle? Possibly. But the day offered an opportunity to learn about the real world, too, which these youngsters will one day need to navigate. “It beats the old swing, swing, slide, swing, swing playground,” opined the eldest among them. It might even beat a screen.■ Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our Opinion newsletter, which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//europe/2026/07/16/in-praise-of-scandinavias-risky-and- dirty-playgrounds
Can Andy Burnham keep his own MPs under control? Lessons from a cat about to outlast yet another prime minister Glasgow, rescuer of the Commonwealth Games, needs saving too Violence is reshaping British political life Britain’s bookies have weathered a tricky World Cup London’s private members’ clubs are proliferating Sir Keir’s bucket list
Can Andy Burnham keep his own MPs under control? Britain’s prime-minister-to-be faces a big task to maintain his authority July 16th 2026 “I keep the troops in line. I put a bit of stick about. I make ’em jump.” Francis Urquhart, anti-hero of the 1990s BBC thriller “House of Cards”, embodies the popular perception of Westminster “whipping” as a brutal way for governments to force their will on MPs. In the series he rises from chief whip to prime minister through lies, manipulation and, eventually, murder. The more pedestrian reality is that the whips use a mix of cajoling and threats to keep party discipline. But during his time as prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer gave the impression that he sympathised with the Urquhart method. Members of the whips’ office showed little tolerance of dissent; 13
backbenchers were ejected from the parliamentary party, at least temporarily, because they opposed Sir Keir’s policies. It did not work. For all his policy failures and unpopularity with voters, the reason Sir Keir is leaving office on July 20th is that he lost the confidence of his own MPs. The enormous majority he won in the 2024 general election was largely squandered: his attempts to force through contentious policies, such as cuts to benefits, through coercion rather than persuasion resulted in embarrassing climbdowns. Andy Burnham, who will replace Sir Keir as prime minister, has promised to take a different approach. In the run-up to the Labour leadership contest, in which he was the only candidate, he was coy about his policy plans but open about the need to make MPs feel better about themselves. He has retreated from his most radical notion: in a book published in 2024, he suggested that whipping should be scrapped altogether because it “makes good people seem like frauds”. It was a recipe for disaster. “Abolish the whip and the Commons would fall apart pretty quickly,” says Sebastian Whale, the author of a book on whipping. Not only do most MPs appreciate being told what their party line is on complex pieces of legislation, but the whips are a crucial conduit between ministers, backbenchers and opposition parties. Mr Burnham’s message to MPs now is vaguer, but more realistic. He has sworn off “using the whip system to create fear or close down debate”. Instead, the whips’ office will be Labour’s “HR department”. And the prime-minister-to-be says that he and the rest of the cabinet will regularly attend votes in the Commons so that colleagues can chat to them in person, a stark contrast to Sir Keir, who cast a vote on less than 7% of the occasions he could have done. Turning up to work and being nice is not enough. It is not clear that Mr Burnham has fully reckoned with the challenges he will face as he tries to establish his authority. The first is a culture of chaos which has taken hold of Westminster over the past decade: the current government has suffered rebellions in more Commons votes than any other newly elected administration since the second world war (apart from the two-party
coalition which took power in 2010), according to an analysis by Philip Cowley of Queen Mary University of London. The churn of prime ministers, and policies, has taught MPs that if they hold out they may get their way. Another difficulty will be dealing with those who are disappointed in their hopes of advancement. For now, Labour MPs are united in their acclaim for Mr Burnham, even if they were not previously fans; more than nine out of ten of them have signed his nomination papers and none can be found to utter a word of public criticism. That will surely change once he has appointed his ministerial team, with sacked Starmer loyalists joining the backbenches alongside those who were passed over for a job. Simon Hart, who was chief whip in the last Conservative government, also warns that as the next general election—due by summer 2029—approaches, it will become harder to keep colleagues in line with vague promises of future promotion. Labour MPs will inevitably divide over some of the tricky dilemmas which confront Mr Burnham. His supporters range from left-wing Corbynites to Blairite centrists; he has sought to persuade them all that he shares their instincts, but that cannot last. Looming problems both big (welfare spending, defence) and relatively small (a plan to reduce the number of jury trials, the future of North Sea oil) will leave one side or the other unhappy.