Porcelain asked:
i saw an advertisment a few moments ago, and it was about a girl baby toy that does everything a real baby does, eats, poops, pees, sleeps, breathes, cries, you even change dippers and prepare the ‘meals’ for it. it was shown with a 3 year old holding it with a smile and the quote ‘you’re the best mommy’. Seems to me putting a little kid into mommy duty since the age of 2-3 is harsh. No wonder some women obsess about having kids and getting married.
the next advertisment was about this action figure guy for boys that fights crime and the bad people with all these lazer guns and rockets to save the world.
are these toys brainwashing or entertaining?
I mean, i don’t see many toys that are educational, i’ve seen fisher price toys but thats about it. Would you choose a baby-toy and a b-b gun instead?
any opinions?
January 10th, 2009 at 5:41 am
not good
January 12th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Women want babies because of women, not because of toys.
January 13th, 2009 at 1:10 am
i was never the doll kinda-gal. i prefered my fishing pole and bike.
January 14th, 2009 at 1:37 am
I really like the leapfrog toys. I think the key is getting some education toys and watching what your kid likes. If ur babay girl wants a baby doll, it’s natural. But iof she wants to play with a car that’s good 2.
January 15th, 2009 at 7:35 am
I think gender roles in toys has been around as long as there have been toys.
Dolls are associated with girls just as much as BB guns are associated with boys. This is nothing new, it’s just a little more noticable now that everyone is hypersensitive to it.
If it helps though, my favorite toy when I was three was a bright pink muppet looking squeezie toy named “Gerber Grouch”. I still have it actually. It will probably end up playing with my kids.
January 18th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
there made for entertainment! There only kids.
January 21st, 2009 at 5:12 am
The cleaning sets (booms, dustpans, etc.) that show a happy little girl using them on the box.. I’m like what the??? how about showing a boy?
Girls like dolls usually that’s just a fact, but I don’t like the mommy mentions on the box.
January 24th, 2009 at 9:33 am
They are just to get the kids to want the items. Called advertising for a reason. But it does work, my son is 4 and he knows the difference between boys and girls toys, but he will play with girl toys also.
January 27th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
for my daughter i buy baby dolls and she loves them. she is like a little mommy. its cute. toys are entertaining not stereotyping them…
January 28th, 2009 at 8:48 am
i think they set a social standard, boys are supposed to be tough and girls are supposed to be girly. i guess it could be called brainwashing if you want to.
January 29th, 2009 at 6:29 am
It’s not brainwashing, it’s what the kids want themselves. Ideally you have a variety of toys for your child and they get to choose what they want to play with, but really they tend to be very gender specific about what they play with even before they really know what their gender or *** is. Even now we have baby dolls but my boys always give me those dolls because they are for mommies, not little boys. Still, my oldest talks about having his own baby someday and being a daddy - so it’s not like they aren’t thinking about other roles.
January 31st, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Children are placed into gender stereotypes from the moment they’re born, with girls being dressed up in pink and boys in blue. It’s a cultural thing, yes, but an unfortunate one. This leads to the stereotype that if a boy or girl wants to break out of the gender role, they are automatically ***.
When I was a kid my parents let me play with any toys I wanted and it made me happier. If I wanted to play with dolls or action figures, they didn’t care either way. I personally would not buy either toy for my child, unless they asked me for it. When I have kids in the future I refuse to place them into gender stereotypes, as difficult as that may be. I want them to create their own identity.
February 2nd, 2009 at 1:47 am
There was a lot of research on this kind of thing in the 70s and early 80s. The general belief at the time was that children are all generally the same and it is socialization including what kind of toys were given to them that molds them into gender stereotypes in later life. I think the research eventually worked out that boys and girls actually do tend to like different things and want to play with different toys. I agree with you though that the extreme stereotyping you described has got to be bad. Lets face it lots of little girls love cars (I did!) and some boys like dolls, around the age of 2 or 3 a doll is much like a teddy.
Something that really annoys me is that Dora toys are always for girls. My little boy loves Dora and lets face it she does lots of stuff boys like, she explores! Why is the merchandising only for girls?
February 2nd, 2009 at 2:53 pm
This is an issue that was discussed in my Sociology of Gender Roles class a couple of years ago.
The fact is, any little boy will play with a kitchen set, a toy vacuum, baby dolls, and even things like dress up shoes, etc., until he is old enough to realize that it is socially unacceptable. Same with girls - they’ll play with trucks, guns, action figures, and whatever else. It’s all how we teach them what is the appropriate toy for them. Toys are even color coded - pink for girls, red/blue/green for boys.
Basically, if you want your child to be able to ignore such stereotypes, live by example. First tell your child that it is normal for women/men to do all kinds of things, then let them see Dad in the kitchen, Mom in the garage, etc.
Toys like that are not brain washing. I grew up with a stove and a vacuum and a bazillion baby dolls. I’m a very strong, independent woman who hates to clean and is a bad cook. It’s all in the parents’ examples, trust me.
February 4th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Dreaming of a Pink Christmas
As Christmas approaches, the children’s toy industry goes into overdrive. Rosalyn Ball looks at how girls and boys toys are still unbelievably segregated along strict gender lines.
Christmas time! Mistletoe and Wine! Going out shopping in unforgiving crowded streets until all the milk of human kindness has drained slowly from your body let alone the money from your wallet. The frantic rush to buy buy buy. Presents for family and friends. ‘Secret Santa’ for work colleagues. Maybe finding one spare minute to send a present to someone who will have a less fortunate Christmas. Buying food to feed an army. Lighting your house up with decorations to blind the neighbours.
And let us not forget, as the bombardment of adverts on the television reminds us, that the focus of this seasonal mass consumption is centred on children. Yes, we’re all doing it for the kids apparently. Which is lucky for toy manufacturers. Around 50% of yearly toy sales happen between the months of October and December alone. Christmas is the season for making profits and setting trends that will keep children coming back to their brands year after year. That’s an awful lot of kids presents under the UK’s Christmas trees.
I find myself at a point in my life where I am now visiting toy shops again at Christmas, not as an over-excited 1970’s child but as a doting Aunt. With two nephews under 5 and another baby on the way my sisters and their partners are giving me all the pleasure that having kids around at Christmas can bring. Although its easy to be cynical about the consumer frenzy that this practically secular festival has become it also brings me great pleasure to see the kids’ excitement and remember my own happy childhood Christmases fondly.
coded warehouses divided largely along gender lines
What makes me less happy is what I have started to discover now I am visiting toy shops in the 21st century and what the toys inside are teaching our children. Have you visited a toy shop recently? Superstore toy shops are colour coded warehouses divided largely along gender lines. I was quite shocked by the very obvious divisions in the toys on sale and whether they were intended for boys or girls. There have been various authentic scientific studies on these subjects but let me give you a few of my own experiences on one visit to Toys R Us. There is a very obvious area designated for girls and these aisles are a sea of candy pink plastic and fluff. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that what can be found in these aisles is make-up kits, dolls, dressing up clothes including ‘Dream Dazzlers’, angels, princesses (all pink) and a witch outfit (black with pink trim!). In these aisles I found many ‘baby’ dolls and many ‘teen’ fashion dolls, all packaged in pink. In a less pink aisle I found a play-kitchen and a play-ironing board. These items were not in pink boxes but unsurprisingly had pictures of girls on the boxes. So to recap, girls toys reflected motherhood, domestic chores, physical appearance, passive activities and PINK!
To the boy’s aisles and the contrast is marked. Most products, like the pink in the girl’s aisles, are distinguished by their ‘boyish’ red, black and dark blue colours. There are cars, wrestling figures, toolkits with only pictures of boys on the boxes, weapons like the very unpleasant and large ‘Ninja Sword’ with sound effects. Costumes included a fireman, Power Rangers, cowboy and pirate hats, ‘Fantastic 4’ character outfits complete with rippling padded biceps and six-pack. These aisles suggest boys play involves mechanics, action, fighting and athleticism.
‘So what?’ my mother frequently says to me when I bemoan the situation. ‘Boys are boys and girls are girls, they ARE different’. Yes of course there are differences between the genders, and if evidence was presented to me that girls and boys in a vacuum used toys along the gender lines I have described then I may even believe that girls really are pre-disposed to liking pink. However I know pink is just a colour and I can see that it is the significance that we as a culture attribute to the colour pink that gives its use meaning.
My 4-year-old nephew loves the colour pink and requested it as the colour to paint his new bedroom, but it would be a very liberal parent that managed to close their minds to the significance we attribute to pink and used it in a boy’s room. What makes me sad is that soon my nephew will be starting school and I think he’ll learn very quickly that some other children will not think it acceptable for him to like the colour pink.
it is the significance our culture attributes to pink that gives its use meaning
Yes children can be cruel, but If you’re in any doubt about who influences the way children develop their gender awareness you just need to look at the ‘Baby X’ studies of the 70’s and 80’s. This US research included an experiment where the same baby was introduced at different times as
February 5th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Its not stereotyping, its socializing. And YES< socializing IS a form of brain washing, so to speak.
If things like this interest you, I encourage you to take a social problems course if you ever get the chance.
Kids are socialized into gender roles from day 1, and this is one way they are socialized. Children are taught what is appropriate for a girl or for a boy by the way we treat them, what we show them, and ultimatly, yes, by the toys we buy them.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
I saw this question earlier, and wanted to answer it (had to pick my son up…)
Anyway, in my opinion, these types of ’stereotyping’ are too far gone now. Perhaps it is dolls like these ones that are helping 13 year old girls feel that they not only need, but can care for, and infant.
Perhaps this is why 15 year old boys think they are ready for the army.
Perhaps this is why little boys are confused as to women’s roles, and vice versa.
I agree with you, and I try not to purchase these kinds of toys. My son had trucks and dolls. My daughter has dolls, dollhouses, and a hot-wheels track, because she likes racing cars. My baby has regular baby toys, gender neutral.
I **** when people try to teach my daughter how to be ‘girly’, and try to tell my son what are ‘boy’ sports. Until some “well-meaning” jack-*** opened his big stupid mouth, my boy was going to do gymnastics. I felt it would be good for him, balance, coordination, strength, Now, he will not do it, because he was told only girls do gymnastics. I have put him in Tae Kwon Doe, which is fine, but….
Anyway, I have sort of ranted here, so I will probably get deleted…but in answer to your question, I agree they are being ‘brainwashed’