Gender Socialization In Let Toys Be Toy

As early as two years old or somewhere around the age when a child beings to attend school, children have an understanding of what their gender is. They are either a male or female and they know this for several reasons. Gender roles are learned by children in a variety of ways. One of them being how children’s play and what toys they play with. According to Introduction to Sociology (2014), Socialization is the social process through which children develop an awareness of social norms and values and achieve a distinct sense of self (p. 8). Through this process a child learns how to become a member of the society by adapting to the ways of the culture in which they live in. Gender socialization is a very important dimension of socialization,
Toy are more gendered than ever and toys are no longer just toys.
2. In Ms. Blog Magazine an interesting article comes up about children’s toys being more gendered than ever. Megan Perryman talks about her childhood and explains that she never felt that she could only play with “girl” toys. She recalls that back in the UK in 1980s boys and girls played with Transformers, princesses, and knights it did not matter if the toy was pink or blue. She also talks about how the stores did not separate the toys into girl or boy aisles. Perryman is now one of the leading voices in Let Toys Be Toys, a UK-based campaign that pushes retail stores to stop marketing their toys toward only girls or only boys (Abadi, P., 2013). In 1960, only 11 percent of households in the U.S. with children under 18 had the mother as the primary or sole breadwinner. Today, a recent study reports, a record-breaking 40 percent of them do. With traditional gender roles in the labor force slowly fading away, it would make sense to see more gender-neutral advertising today: boys playing with toy oven sets, girls playing with toy trucks, etc. (Abadi, P. 2013). That is not the case, toys are not gender-neutral. Toys are
Toy manufacturers market gender-specific toys towards to girls and boys, perpetuating traditional gender roles (Pearson, A.,). When walking in the toy section at your local store you know who the toy companies are targeting, and through this children understand that girls should take care of babies, cook, clean, and should worry about how they look to society. Although there is nothing wrong with a girl having a full of pink toys have you ever thought what if she wanted to play with a train set or cars, and maybe even boys want to bake something in and a meal in and easy oven set. This is not the case cars, trucks, and action figures are targeted to boys which affects their gender role because it teach boys are more aggressive. While toys like dolls are marketed to girls. Dolls tend to teach children a traditional gender role, reinforcing old culture norms, which suggest that only girls should take care of babies (Pearson,