Often when a couple becomes pregnant and finds out the sex of the infant, stereotypes begin to form. If the child is female, their room will often be painted pink with cutesy borders. The crib will have pink blankets with ruffles on them. The baby girl will be presented with soft toys and cute stuffed animals, as well as perhaps a baby doll or two. At the baby shower, the mother will typically be presented with pink and purple clothing, the colors of choice for a female child. When the baby finally comes along, she will typically be treated as a gentle princess. When it comes to girls, adults are often more careful, as if the baby girl will break.
On the other hand, if the couple is having a male child, the room will be painted blue or green with borders usually depicting superheroes or sports oriented paraphernalia. Though the boy may receive stuffed animals, they are typically of a more ferocious nature than the stuffed animals a girl might receive. The blankets are usually blue or another color associated with little boys. Perhaps one of the boy’s first gifts will be a tiny little catcher’s mitt, or something else sports related. At the baby shower, the mother will receive blue and green clothes. Family and friends are more likely to take a little boy to a sporting event than their female counterpart. Clearly, from the moment a child is brought into this world, they are pushed toward a certain stereotype. Now, the real question is – Are boys naturally more aggressive due to higher testosterone levels, or is it more culturally defined, by the way we treat our children and the gifts we bestow upon them? As mentioned in Human Development – A Lifespan View, “Children don’t live in a gender-neutral world for long. Althou...
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... boys, who – away from the battle zone of their friends and brothers – turn out to be surprisingly cuddly and clingy? (Blum, 238)”
Not every male or female is going to fit the mold, if there really even is one.
The stereotypes stated above created by society and parents are most often useless in truly predicting a child’s choice of play and toys. Kids are going to gravitate toward what they enjoy. Even the author Deborah Blum states “I don’t think in pastels, myself. I think jungle-green, blood-red. (Blum, 236)” Stereotypes give us something to group people by, but we cannot always judge a person by them.
Works Cited
Blum, Deborah. “The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?” Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. 6th Edition. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 573-580. Print.
Toy stores are perfect places for a sociologist to use their sociological imagination. Gendering and racism is thought to be something that is socially constructed as opposed to biologically constructed. Gendering starts during infancy, and around 2 years old children start to internalize these gender differences. I argue that children’s toys help socialize children into gender specific roles. Toy stores, like Target and Toys R Us help us understand what types of toys help to gender children. I will explain how the toys in the toy aisles differ and compare. Not all toys are either male or female, some toys are gender neutral.
Blum, Deborah. “The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?” Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. 6th Edition. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 573-580. Print.
I am not saying that a Barbi doll is necessarily a bad thing, besides the fact that some of her outfits are frightening, but I would rather have the life like rocket that can fly a 100 feet up before it returns to the ground. This discussion might appear superficial at first, but there is an underlying problem to why a parent might want to encourage their young daughters to play with a science kit instead of deciding what evening gown Barbi looks best in. A lot of the toys designed for boys might also be used as a learning tool. When a boy plays with legos and starts to create buildings he is developing his creativity. This act could lead him into a career as an architect or engineer. When he is encouraged to play with rockets or a microscope he has the potential of developing an interest in science that could lead him into a career working on satellites.
In order to fully comprehend the how gender stereotypes perpetuate children’s toys, one must understand gender socialization. According to Santrock, the term gender refers to the, “characteristics of people as males and females” (p.163). An individual is certainly not brought into the world with pre-existing knowledge of the world. However, what is certain is the belief that the individual has regarding him- or herself and life stems from socialization—the development of gender through social mechanisms. For instance, when a baby is brought into this world, his or her first encounter to gender socialization arises when the nurse places a blue or pink cap on the baby’s head. This act symbolizes the gender of the baby, whether it is a boy (blue cap) or a girl (pink cap). At the age of four, the child becomes acquai...
The world today revolves around a patriarchal society where it is a man’s world. Men are stereotyped to take jobs such as manual labor, construction, and armed forces while women are stereotyped to become nurses, caregivers, and cooks; but what makes it say that a woman can’t do manual labor or be a construction worker? Marc Breedlove, a behavioral endocrinologist at the University of California at Berkley, explains that gender roles “are too massive to be explained simply by society” (679). These gender behavior differences go far beyond our culture and into our genetics through Darwin’s theories of natural selection, survival of the fittest, and evolution.
When you walk into the toy section of any store, you do not need a sign to indicate which section is the girls’ side and which section is the boys’ side. 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.
For a long time pink has been associated with femininity, which gives us the underlying assumption that girls are sweet, gentle, and delicate because that is what pink has come to represent in our society. Yet, the colours used in the toys meant for boys are black and blue which are seen as tough and aggressive. Coincidently, sweet, gentle and delicate is how society sees girls and how they believe they should act when they become women. Furthermore, tough and aggressive is how we want the men to be in our society. Critical sociology looks to gender as a competition where one gender is
First off, I will describe the role the toys are playing when it comes to the socialization process for boys and girls. The masculine wrestling action figures and construction vehicles are showing boy 's their gender roles. In the book, “You May Ask Yourself”, defines social roles as “the concept of gender roles, set of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one’s status as male or female” (Conley, pg 130). In the store it is fairly easy for parents to find which part of the store will fit their kids gender roles. For parents with young boys, all they have to do is look for the blue in the store. When looking for the girl toys, parents just need to find the pink. Parents are actively doing gender in their child
Many of the toys I had consisted of pink frilly things that were given to me by my parents or other adults. My dolls were Bratz dolls that were full of different outfits and makeup, teaching me to worry about the way I looked. My animal related toys consisted of little plastic horses and farm animals that were always in “gender neutral colors”, they always came in a red pack and any accessories were always bright and yellow or green. While when I had a gender-neutral toy, a leapfrog leader, that had a distinction of being a girls because of the case being pink and purple, not in in of the “gender neutral” color categories. My sports toys were the same, my soccer balls and basket balls were not neural colors, but pink or purple,. I also played with “boy toys” like cars, footballs, baseballs, however none of these things were ever bought for me. If I asked for these “boy toys” I was told that they were for boys not for girls, experiencing cultural competence, because no adult in my life thought buying a girl those types of toys were
That is, boys will customarily receive blue clothing or toys while pink clothing or toys will be for girls. “Children‘s toys and games are also differentiated on the basis of sex” (Diekman and Murnen 2004; Seccombe p.99). Through these toys or playing with these toys, boys and girls would eventually distinguish the differences between male and female; also, may strengthen, and perpetuate the traditional gender stereotypes. For instance, boys or men are expected to act and behave in ways that have been considered masculine or associated with masculinity (Seccombe p.104); “men are often assumed to be more aggressive, sexual, unemotional, rational, and task oriented than women” (Seccombe p.93); and thus, action figures, such as Superman, WWE wrestling toys, and Hulk are made for boys to play with. While girls or women’s roles are associated with femininity (Seccombe p.104); “women are assumed to be more nurturing, passive, and dependent” (Seccombe p.93); and so, cooking and baking set and baby dolls with bottle feeding and diapering set are made for girls, so, they could apply their nurturing and culinary skills when they get older and mainly do household chores. Personally, I believe these toys have both negative and positive influence on children’s socialization. For instance, playing with toy guns or military toy set with a knife may lead to early exposure to violence and aggression. However, some toys, such as Lego building set and blocks, arts and crafts have a powerful and influential influence on children’s thinking and
Even before the children are born, parents begin choosing clothing and decorations by color based on the sex of the baby. The stereotype of pink, pastels, yellow and white for girls and bright or dark colors like green, blue and red for boys has long been a part of our culture. How many times have you heard kids argue over toys because the girls don’t want the icky boy color or the boys don’t want the gross girl color? The issue of color may go deeper than just fighting for toys. Studies have been done showing that school classrooms, especially for younger grades, are typically decorated in “boy” colors and reflect an environment that is most comfortable for boys (Bruning 23). Parents and teachers may be able to help reverse this thinking by buying toys in gender neutral colors and by using the same colors for boys and girls.
Girls are supposed to play with dolls, wear pink, and grow up to become princesses. Boys are suppose to play with cars, wear blue, and become firefighters and policemen. These are just some of the common gender stereotypes that children grow up to hear. Interactions with toys are one of the entryway to different aspects of cognitive development and socialism in early childhood. As children move through development they begin to develop different gender roles and gender stereotypes that are influenced by their peers and caregivers. (Chick, Heilman-Houser, & Hunter, 2002; Freeman, 2007; Leaper, 2000)
Family is the first influence to the children’s gender socialization. The interaction of children with their parents is the first exposure of the gender differences idea to them. Since the babies is born, parents start to treat sons and daughters differently with their gender stereotype by dressing infants with different colors’ clothes, giving them gender differentiated toys. One study indicates that parents have differential exp...
The behaviors that children seem to learn do have gender specific characteristics. Examples of male appropriate behavior includes: aggression, independence and curiosity. Female behaviors reflect the opposite of the male behaviors: passivity, dependence and timidity (Howe, 3). Parents have a strong impact on the sex roles that children acquire. If the sex roles are stereotypical in the home then the children will imitate the behavior that is observed in the home. Simple, parental behaviors such as who drives and who pays for dinner influence the children’s perceptions of sex roles (Seid, 115).
Wood, J.T. (1999). Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture, Third Edition. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company.