Parents’ perceptions of affordances for children in nature / La percepción que tienen los padres de las oportunidades para los niños en la naturaleza

Abstract

Abstract Parents’ actions as either as promoters or as restrictors of affordances depend upon their own perception of the environment in which they identify the affordances that are possible for children to access or not. From this theoretical standpoint, the present study aimed to describe parents’ perception of nature as a place that offers affordances that children may access. In a public park in Florianópolis (Brazil), 105 parents were interviewed face-to-face, guided by open- and closed-ended questions about 26 affordances. The closed-ended questions corresponded to affordances perceived as possible and not possible for children to access in nature. The open-ended questions were about the places in nature where it would be possible for children to access the affordances. The results showed that parents evoked resources as trees, grass and sand, and places such as a lagoon, in a variety of affordances that can be accessed by children. Such results corroborate other studies that have identified the use of nature in children’s play.