Gendered Toys

[JunebuginDecember]

So on another thread, that has thankfully been deleted, regarding teens that identify as trans somebody made a comment about gendered toys being 'left in the seventies'. Am I alone in thinking that this is not the case at all?

I think parents have certainly gotten better at educating kids that toys have no gender but I'm still seeing toy aisles that are certainly separated by gender as well as tv advertisements that always have little girls playing with the barbies, my little ponies etc and the little boys playing with the hot wheels etc

I was curious about others' thoughts on this. Do you think we have made much progress there?

I have most of my childhood toys from the mid-80s complete with the instruction manuals that all have boys and girls dressed in dungarees, blue yellow green type colours and playing with the various toys which would now be seen as 'STEM toys'.

Nowadays the toy shops are pink aisle (dollies, pretend washing machines and mops) and blue (diggers, dinos, science kits).

Definitely not 'left' in the 70s, created in the 90s more like.

I would agree that there is a lot more selling to specific niches, which I think is mainly a product of more advanced consumerism.

That being said, I'm a bit wary of defining "progress" in this area. There is something of a tendency to assume that the ideal would be no sense of toys being more associated with one sex or the other.

I'm not sure that it's particularly necessary or desirable to go that far with it. I'm inclined to think that as long as it's fairly low key, and there is room for actual children to cross lines and play with what they want at a given time, that's what's most important. Not strict adherence to some neutral ideal.

Of course there were 'girl' toys and 'boy' toys in the 70's and 80's, and even before that.

What there wasn't and has been exploding on to the market since my eldest was born in 2006 was having every toy in a pink and blue colour way, Leapfrog is especially bad for this, as is Vtech.

Yes, I know someone exactly like that.

I was wondering if the meme that says do you need genitals to play with the toy, no (it's for everyone), yes (it's not for children ) would now be considered transphobic because presumably children who like dollies and princess dresses MUST be girls and children who like tractors and diggers MUST be boys.

One of my children is your age, OP. When he was little the Early Learning Centre had one cash register, one toy hoover, one ride on car etc etc - in orange and purple.

By the time his little sister was born there were two of everything and they were blue or pink.

Yes ELC were particularly bad for this too. Luckily my great nephews are quite happy to play with dd's pink water and sand table. (We got it from the charity shop, I didn't specifically pick it)

It's boggling to me how things have gotten worse. But then I never really considered the role consumerism plays. Of course gendered items are a bigger money maker as horrible as that is.

It's a bit two steps forward, one step back.

Catalogues are getting better and showing kids playing with non-stereotyped products, and I think some childcare settings (which are super important in messages kids get) are becoming better at not imposing ideas on kids. There's still too many 'pink versions' of things, though.

But the way shops and websites are divided is still reinforcing things - I know some people get all 'But how are people supposed to find the right stuff?!' - uhm, divide it into 'dolls', 'construction toys', 'art and crafts', 'action figures' etc etc.

I actually really like Lego Friends. It has loads of detail in the sets and it usually does quite a lot of things. And there's nothing that says it has to be for girls - DS loves it as much as DD does.

Hi op. Interesting thought.

What do you think of charities like Mermaids using the criteria of a child liking the toys supposedly intended for the opposite sex (like they’d know) as an indicator that the child is ‘trans’?

This seems to be a common example given by parents of extremely young ‘trans’ children.

NC to avoid outing myself.

I didn't know about Maya's involvement with Let Toys be Toys - what an an amazing woman! FWIW, the Wikipedia article about that campaign was the second one that I created (Let Books be Books was the first).

Its not even barbies versus cars. There’s lots of odd toys that end up either blue or pink. Vtech are the worst for it. I try and avoid buying either just because I feel so conflicted about avoided gender specific stuff but not overcompensating.

Susie Green, head of Mermaids, talks about 'gendered toys':

'Jackie's dad struggled, and he blamed me. His thoughts were that because I allowed the Polly Pocket and the My Little Pony, that I was facilitating and encouraging ...all the "girl toys" or "girly toys" as such were taken away and put away, and Jack was made aware that this was not appropriate. And suddenly, a confident, happy little boy became quite quiet, withdrawn, very clingy, and tearful.'

Really heartbreaking. And all because the child wanted to play with certain toys.

I don't want this thread being derailed with stuff about how it relates to 'trans kids' thanks.

I was more just interested in thoughts from people who grew up in the decades before me and so far the posts have been quite illuminating.

It’s definitely still a thing. People talk about it a lot more and try not to do it, but people still end up buying the same sorts of things.
It’s still better though. In the 90s kids would take the mick out of a boy playing with dolls. No one does that to my son and he wears pink and everything. It’s more than lots of people still choose to gender them.
And although I try and be better I am in no way perfect. He loves dinosaurs and dolls atm so make what you will of that.

It's not derailing. It's completely pertinent.

Perhaps you shouldn’t have chosen this board then? It’s the one part of mumsnet allotted for talking about how the promotion of gender over sex impacts everyone, including children.

You thought Bratz dolls were bad...

In the 70s and 80s toys traditional 'girls' toys like dolls prams, dolls clothes, toy kitchen stuff were the colours they were at the time, blue, brown, orange, things just didn't come in pink.

I recall having two pots with faces, one orange, one blue. My toy iron was orange the iron board blue. My toy buggy was blue, my sister pram was brown.

Traditional boy's toys were primary colours, red, blue, yellow.

I had a red ride-on tractor.

Now all girls stuff is pink and purple. And boy's stuff green and blue.

Even stuff that doesn't need to be gendered like slides, paddling pools, baby walkers, ride ons.

Whole other topic I realise but can I assume that clothing was the same? As in became needlessly gendered as a result of consumerism?

About a year ago a friend of mine was having a baby and tryong to find a 'neutral' outfit that wasn't grey or beige was a chore...

Everything was orange and brown corduroy in the 70s. Maybe a bit of green for variety.

brown T bar shoes from Clarks and polo neck jumpers, handed from sibling to sibling.

Girls had to wear dresses but only for occasional family parties and maybe church on Sunday if your family went in for that.

Eg

Largely.

If you back back to Victorian and Edwardian times, baby clothes were all white.

You started to see more colours as people had more money and there were more store bought items. But for a very long time boys and girls clothes had very similar colours, with not a lot of differentiation.

Now, girls did for a long time weardifferent clothes, in terms of wearing skirts and dresses. But there was still not the amount of pink. And play clothes were very similar and often passed down. There was a lot more emphasis, even for dresses and such, on being hard wearing. Lots of corduroy, wool jumpers, and so on, often darker colours that would not show dirt.

Most people only had a small number of outfits. School uniform, one set of play clothes, and Sunday best. One sweater for the winter.

Honestly I kind of love this 😂