Ethnography On Gender Socialization

Ethnography on Gender Socialization For my ethnography research, I selected 2 different locations to observe gender socialization amongst children at a toy store. The main focus of this ethnography is to see what types of toys appeal to children based on gender. Also, to see if parents are pushing their children on what types of toys they are allowed to choose from. First off, the stores I visited for my research was Walmart and Target. Both of these locations consisted of the same amount of toys on the shelf during the visit. From by observations at both of these locations, I observed about 10 children in total. About 6 of the children were boys and the other 4 were girls. All of the boys I saw were more involved with the toys related
to cars, tools, and action figures. None of them were really geared towards the more feminine toys like cooking sets and dolls. They didn’t even look at the direction at where the girl’s toys were. Except for one child I saw, who took a doll off the shelf and started running over the doll with a monster truck he had picked up. Next, for the 4 girls, 3 out of the 4 were playing with dolls, house sets, and cooking sets. But I noticed one girl that was playing with about 3 different cars off the shelf along with the other toys for boys. She seemed really interested with the cars and her mom ended up buying those cars for that child. In conclusion, I noticed that children for the most part are socialized to only play with certain types of toys. This Ethnography helped me understand why kids play with certain toys and are not accustomed with play toys relevant to the opposite gender. I noticed that parents play a big role on socializing kids for what they are allowed to play with.