girl help: how can toys influence gender socialization in children 7- 9 years old. - Help.com

dolls and toy stoves for girls teach a traditional role in life for them.Weapons for boys might teach them to be aggressive.

Kitchen sets and ironing boards are sold to girls….
2Hazel said it!

They unfortunately teach those special kids that don’t fit into the norm, that there is something wrong with them for being different.
But in the end, a lot of the kids I’m talking about will just play with whatever toys suit them in the end anyway!

Yep true that is Dougie, Ive got boy and girl and when they were young they had Barbies and Action man, I often found son playing with Barbie and daughter playing with Action man, then it was Action man was Barbies husband, I tried not to by too much in the way of weapons at a young age, but my son had some bow and arrows, and water pistols, it didn’t make him a violent kid though, I think violence in a child is learn t more by t.v if they have that tendency to be rough with other kids, I don’t think violent vidio games and cartoons helps a lot.
Ok Im gabbling, just my thoughts on it :-)

dog ate my homework

You should encourage children to play with whatever toys they want to play. Don’t give girls dolls and play stoves and boys footballs. I think it it very damaging to teach children to follow gender rules because it will only limit them in life. Make all toys available to both boys and girls.

I don’t think people realize how many social values toys teach children. The kinds of toys you give your children can shape the lives. A lot of times boys are encouraged to play and get dirty and explore and girls are encouraged to help mommy in the kitchen. This can influence them in later life. It can affect a girls confidence and can affect their future careers.

In my opinion children should be raised gender neutral but that is close to impossible when everything in society is separated by gender. Ok, back to the point, give all toys to both girls and boys, don’t separate them because that is teaching them that as a boy or a girl they can only do certain things, which is not true.

I could go on forever (I love discussing gender lol)

Do your own homework!

So as a kid in the 80s I had Star Wars figurines, and He-man toys!
My two favourites ever!
Other boys would play with their action figures in the standard kind of way.
Bashing them together and make them fight!

Whereas mine would be great political leaders, or go on awesome time travel trips, or whatever. I also used to make new playsets for them. I was sadly disappointed however that both lines of toys had so few female characters.

And my parents were a little disturbed when I wanted to get the She-Ra characters when they came out. He-Man had Teela, and Skeletor had Evil-Lyn, and all the other men had to go without! Lol

Also, I think generally speaking, its good to encourage kids to collect as much of set of something as possible. Not buy them dribs and drabs of different toy-lines here and there. Because, the kids when I was growing up, had no sense of saving their pocket money to complete their collections. And so their parents would just buy them a bit of this and a bit of that.

My psychological analysis at the time suggested that these kids had very short attention spans, and that as soon as the would get bored with one toy, their parents would buy them something else!

PS. I’m 32 and I still collect them.
Toys are great for stimulating the imagination for anyone who has even the slightest ambition to be a writer!

I’ve always thought they should make a line of gender neutral toys for adults, to help them keep the inner-children alive :D