Question

GIRL TOYS: Kitchen toys, baby dolls, dress up clothing

Questions:

What themes and expectations are stressed in these toys for girls?

What types of adult roles are girls rehearsing when they play with these toys.

BOY TOYS: toddler basketball court, race cars, play tools

Questions:

What themes and expectations are stressed in these toys for boys?

What types of adult roles are boys rehearsing when they play with these toys?

Answer 1

• Gender differences are very much evident even in the toys children play with.A parent would always focus on buying dolls and kitchen sets for girls and cars and trucks for boys.
• These stereotypical shopping of toys indicate that girls are different from boys,that its ok for a boy to play with cars but not a kitchen set.
• For adults, play is a break from life. For children, especially in the earliest stages of childhood development, play is life, and toys are the tools of early learning.
• Children’s toys seem to be moving in the opposite direction, reinforcing traditional roles rather than expanding them. The implications are serious: The way girls play may affect how their brains develop.
  
• Gender-based toy ads from have always pushed traditional roles: the “little homemaker”; the “young man of industry.”Children and parents alike often police masculinity in ways that can magnify gender distinctions in toys, it’s hard to sell a boy a pink and purple play kitchen.
• Aside from all the pink, purple, and other pastel colors that fill the shelves on the girls’ side, the glitter sticks out a lot as well. The boys’ toys however are mostly dark colors – blue, black, red, gray, or dark green. The colors typically used on either side are very stereotypical in themselves.
• Themes highlighted in toys for girls focus on being a home maker,taking care of family,being sensitive and not a tomboy.Whereas for boys its all about "being a man" of the house,being strong and becoming a patriarch of the family,becoming the breadwinner etc.
• The extreme concentration of cars in the boys’ toys shows the stereotypical attitude that all boys like cars. The toys that weren’t car related all promoted either an aggressive behavior or “manly” job.
• These gender stereotypical roles that are instilled in children by their parents and even manufacturers has lead to men being a specific way and females being a specific way.Some men now view women inferior than them and dont really consider them at power especially in professional terms.They have been instilled with this ideology of women being at home and taking care of children and they working and earning money.
• Which is why a man who is slightly feminine is considered "sissy" and looked down upon and a girl being a little masculine is a "tomboy" and deviating from the "normal" norms of being and behaving like a girl.This has lead to the gender inequality debate not just professionally but in terms of embracing one's gender identity as well.
• Some men and women have fear and still feel ashamed of embracing who they are actually as an adult and living the way they want.