Edited by Azizi Powell
Latest revision -April 28, 2026
This is Part III of a three part pancocojams series about the toxicity of the messages that certain English language jump rope and/or hand clap rhymes (also known as "skipping songs" and "hand games") convey about romantic relationships.
This post presents a few online excerpts about girls' recreational rhymes and socialization.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-toxicity-of-certain-jump-rope-or.html for Part I of this pancocojams series. That post presents statements about the toxicity of certain recreational rhymes about romantic relationships. This post also presents a few examples of jump rope or hand clap rhymes that I believe include toxic references.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-toxicity-of-certain-jump-rope-or_26.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. That post presents examples of children's hand clap rhymes that I believe include toxic messages because they include references to paying for sex or because they include references to rape.
Warning- These examples contain some sexually explicit language. However, these rhymes are only mildly explicit compared to some really dirty children's recreational rhymes that aren't featured on this pancocojams blog.****
The content of this post is presented for socio-cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
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HAND CLAP RHYMES ARE PART OF GIRLS' SOCIALIZATION
"AI Overview [in response to my question "What do hang clapping games teach girls about romantic relationships?]
Hand-clapping games, often played by young girls, function
as a form of social conditioning and non-threatening practice for navigating
complex social dynamics, including aspects of romantic relationships. These
games, frequently passed down through oral tradition, explore themes of
intimacy, courtship, betrayal, and social hierarchy.”…
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GAMES BLACK GIRLS PLAY-Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop by Kyra D. Gaunt
AI Overview
"The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from
Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop by Kyra D. Gaunt was first published on February 6,
2006, by NYU Press. It is a non-fiction, academic work in ethnomusicology,
focusing on the intersection of black music, culture, and children's
games."...
**
The Games Black Girls Play illustrates how black musical styles are incorporated into the earliest games African American girls learn―how, in effect, these games contain the DNA of black music. Drawing on interviews, recordings of handclapping games and cheers, and her own observation and memories of gameplaying, Kyra D. Gaunt argues that black girls' games are connected to long traditions of African and African American musicmaking, and that they teach vital musical and social lessons that are carried into adulthood. In this celebration of playground poetry and childhood choreography, she uncovers the surprisingly rich contributions of girls’ play to black popular culture."
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EXCERPT OF JOURNAL PAPER ABOUT HAND CLAP GAMRS AND VIOLENCE
From https://lupinepublishers.com/anthropological-and-archaeological-sciences/pdf/JAAS.MS.ID.000213.pdf "Clapping Games on You Tube: A Construction Tool of
Gender Violence and Other Types in the Child Stage" by Joanna Riera and Jenny Cubells Serra*
Journal of Anthropological Sciences and Archeological Sciences
Department of Social Psychology, Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona, Spain
*Corresponding author: Jenny Cubells Serra, Department of
Social Psychology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, UAB, Campus
Published October 11, 2021
Boys and girls have the ability to subtly interpret their environment and position themselves critically with respect to ways of life, as thinking subjects and participants in the production, planning and circulation of knowledge [1]. Through imaginative play, children become an active role in cultural construction, such as violence or gender [2]. It has been described in the literature [3,4] that boys and girls play representative games of adult activities with a taboo nature (murder, death, abuse, weddings, sex, rituals...).
Under a presumably innocent framework- “it’s just child’s play”-that avoid responsibility for actions, death, violence, sex and gender identity coexist in many of them, testing the limits of the norms hegemonic of our society and offering alternatives (Riera, 2015).
Among these discourses, violence is one of the most exploited. Clapping games are evidence of this function. These are motor songs in which two or more participants stand opposite each other–or in a circle if there are more than two-and hit their hands or other parts of the body, sometimes interspersing descriptive gestures. In them, there is a cyclical choreography that is repeated while the lyrics of the song are sung (Casals y Autora, 2021). In general, girls between 6 and 10 years old are the usual protagonists, although it depends on the historical moment...
This cultural product is constantly changing and adapting according to the sociocultural context. In its repertoire,
traditional music, fairy tales, the record industry, commercial products
and the Internet are mixed; continuously transforming and reconstructing the songs that children use to play [7]. Previous research
on English Clapping games highlights the ability to use singing to
experience the limits of their social life as well as the power
relationships that appear into the game [6]. Knowledge about the
co-construction of identities is also provided [8], as well as the subversive
character that appears in narratives and gestural play [4] and the
construction and maintenance of transmission [9]. In addition, its
repetitive transmission pattern and the emotional charge associated
with the speech of the lyrics, make the learning process easy to
establish (Berger & Luckman, 2003). In relation to its
rhythmic-melodicgesture structure we highlight the recent study by Casals and Autora [10]. Social networks have become increasingly
important as an oral transmission strategy in current childhood [11]
and potentially influence the construction of identity of
children and adults (Burn,2010). Virtual ethnography is an increasingly
used tool in the quantitative and qualitative paradigm in the
field of social sciences [7,12-15]. Since 2005, YouTube is the digital
platform for viewing and uploading videos on the Internet par
excellence worldwide [11]. [7] used YouTube to make a netnography on
the transmission mechanisms of two Clapping Games. [12] studied ways of learning, playing and creating through English
Clapping games uploaded to this platform. As of June 1, 2016, there
were almost 50 million total views of the videos that were part
of this study, demonstrating the importance of this context in
children’s oral transmission of Clapping games. Despite the
international importance of these games in the social development of the participants in the networks, in the forms of stereotypes, violence, gender and other elements of the
cultural context that are built in them there has not been carried out any comprehensive analysis of the thematic content of Spanish Clapping games."...
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THE TOXICITY OF SOME CHILDREN'S RECREATION RHYMES THAT REFER TO ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS AND SEX
This write-up is partly a reprint of a 2025 pancocojams post entitled "Risque Recreational Rhymes That Are Part Of Some Girls' Sexual Education"
https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2025/09/recreation-rhymes-as-part-of-girls.html
That portion of that pancocojams post also includes a quote from a Mudcat folk music discussion thread that I started in 2009 about the rhyme "We Wear Our Hair In Curls"
-Azizi, 23 August 09, Subject: We Wear Our Hair In Curls https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=123101
As of the date of this pancocojams post (April 26, 2026) that Mudcat discussion thread is still open for comments.
Here's a portion of my first comment in that discussion thread:
"We wear our hair in curls" is the second line of a rhyme or song that begins with the line "We are the _____ girls". The name of the city where the people singing the song live is usually inserted into the blank space of that first line. Instead of the city name, the name of the singer's school, camp, or another group that they belong to may be used. I chose the title "We wear our hair in curls" because in this forum the blank space in that first line might make that title confusing.
I believe that "We wear our hair in curls" originated as a children's playground rhyme or song. A version of this rhyme was popularized by drag queens who sung it during the 1969 Stonewall Riots (examples and more information about that significant event will be provided below)."...
NOTE: Some of the examples that are posted to this thread are sexually explicit."...
-end of quote-
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EXCERPT FROM THE 2003 BOOK "VALUES IN SEX EDUCATION FROM PRINCIPLES TO PRACTICE (by J. Mark Halstead and Michael J. Reiss)
[Pancocojams Editor's Note: This excerpt is from a no longer active link that I received as a result of a Google search for information about books or journal articles about sex education for children.
https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2025/09/recreation-rhymes-as-part-of-girls.html
"Another example of the hidden curriculum is found in the playground where the children learn a world of rules and rituals that have little to do with adults. Skipping and clapping songs are a central part of this world and are passed from child to child, from group to group. These songs were studied as an extension to the research on children developing sexual values (Halstead 2000b), and it was found that many of the songs are charged with sexuality and sexual awareness. Indeed, adults can sometimes be shocked by their rude, violent, scurrilous and surprisingly worldly wise nature. They give expression to children's sometimes limited understanding of sexual matters, and make a significant contribution to children's informal sex education.
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Here's another excerpt from that book about a girls' only discussion group that was part of the research that this book reported on:
"The girls in the sample are happy to talk about what they expect their sexual life to be like in the future. They seem very aware of the problems of early pregnancy which they are able to spell out quite clearly. Interestedly, falling in love is never mentioned by these girls as a prelude to sexual experience. However, there is a sense among some of the girls of not being fully in control of their lives, and they are aware of the possibility that their early sexual encounters might occur "accidentally", that is without full intention, as a result of drink or fear of being 'dumped' or rebellion against an over protective father or simply out of curiosity"...
-snip-
The statement from the 2003 book "Values in Sex Education: From Principles to Practice" by J. Mark Halstead and Michael J. Reiss that "Interestedly, falling in love is never mentioned by these girls as a prelude to sexual experience" caused me to wonder how many girls' recreational rhymes included references to falling in love.
As a result of my informal analysis of a large number of those rhymes that I have collected (mostly found online) it appears that far fewer girls' recreational rhymes from the 1980s to this date (2026) include references to romantic relationships i.e. "loving a boy" or even "liking a boy" (with the word "boyfriend", "fella" or "man" used instead of "boy".) .
I believe that the paucity of girls' recreational rhymes that include the word love (used in a romantic sense) reflects and reinforces some of what I mean when I refer to the "toxicity of some children's recreational rhymes".
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This concludes Part III of this three part pancocojams series.
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