The Spheres of Life and Daily Activities of Maasai Children

This chapter provides an overall account of the living spheres, daily activities, and staged mobility of Maasai children along their growth and developmental pathways. Once children start to walk, their mobility gradually expands through engaging in various work and play activities, usually in gender differences. The time budget allocated for these two types of activity does not linearly shift from play to work along with age but differs according to individual levels of competence. This characteristic is afforded by local parenting norms that value young children’s cooperative roles in managing subsistence and individual autonomy in social participation. The findings highlight childhood mobility and the often-overlooked play of pastoralist children as two indispensable elements in understanding their development.