Jump Rope

Jumping Rope and Gender

Boys' participation in Jump Rope never died out in the following centuries, but in Victorian England and America, Jump Rope experienced a resurgence in popularity as industrialization relocated more children to the crowded cities where play spaces were small and few. Even then, Jump Rope was still generally considered to be a boys' game that stressed athletic ability and individual competition, and which was far too strenuous for girls.

In the early 1940s, many children used jumping rope as a form of play. It only required a rope, and anyone could play.

Yet by the end of the 1800s, girls too began to Jump Rope, particularly in urban areas, as the changing cultural mores permitted them to take part in more physical activities, and their clothing styles were altered to make allowances for their new, more active, lifestyles. As girls took to the city streets with their ropes, however, they changed the rules of the game, making Jump Rope into a more collaborative and social practice. Girls often jumped rope in groups with two girls (called enders) turning the rope for the others, and they started to recite chants and rhymes to help them keep in step with the rhythm of the rope and to alternate jumpers and enders. Jump Rope quickly became the domain of girls, and most boys soon turned to more outwardly competitive pursuits.

As boys abandoned jump roping, psychologists and folklorists became interested in the Jump Rope rhymes that the girls were using. The earliest of the girls' chants were written down in the 1880s, and many Jump Rope rhymes were studied and recorded throughout the first [Page 342]half of the 20th century as important works of folk literature. The Jump Rope rhymes have their roots in singing games, counting-out rhymes, and nursery rhymes, and they vary regionally and generationally, as works of folklore often do. Their obvious function is to help the jumpers maintain a sense of rhythm and improve their Jump Rope skills, but the rhymes, with their nonsense, humor, and observations about school, families, and common problems, also help children, historically girls, to negotiate the world around them.

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