I posted a comment on an interesting blog by Delilah
She was incensed because when she visited Hamleys in Regent Street, London recently she found that the boys and girls toys were 'segregated' and situated on completely different floors of the very large department store. Delilah objects to this stereotyping of children's toys and hence the reason for her blog, Hamleys toy shop promotes gender apartheid
As this is a subject in which I have an interest - and as Christmas is coming and an awful lot of toys will be bought and discarded in the next few months I thought I would share my thoughts!
Before you read my comment, please do not think I am in favour of gender segregation in toy shops! I would hate to think that girls were not allowed the opportunity to peruse or to play with exciting things like chemistry sets, and likewise that boys could not have the excitement of learning how to cook. Since I cannot perform chemical experiments or produce a reasonable meal I honestly will say neither is due to lack of opportunity educationally or socially-with-play-opportunities, simply I am just very heavily inept when it comes to weighing out any sort of ingredients....
However I would like to point out that I was as surprised as anyone when, in my second year at university, my own sociological research overturned my long held hypothesis that children did not have an inbuilt gender prejudice when choosing their playthings. As a mother of three young children I was convinced that we as a society 'socialised' our children into demanding gender stereotypical toys by our either influencing or applauding their choices ["Yes Maisie darling, I am sure you would *love* to have Miss Betty's Hair Salon for Christmas whilst your strong big brother Oliver has a woodwork set capable of building a replica of Stonehenge in Oak" type of thing]
In my research and after a lot of observation and note taking at various nursery schools and early play scheme areas I realised that at first babies and toddlers played with whatever was placed in front of them, regardless of gender. But by about three the little ones seemed to generally congregate into single sex gender groups and migrate to certain single sex activities: girls to the more domestic toys like 'pretend' home making skills, doll dressing etc and boys to the building bricks and toy cars. Actually this quite horrified me. Girls also seemed to be more attracted to bright,'pretty, colours when at the dressing up box - wanting to look 'beautiful' with boys rushing about imitating anyone grown-up who could rush about, basically, like a fireman or policeman.
I had previously subscribed to the theory that if a young child played with toys like building bricks it would help develop their mathematical skills in later life so had made sure that my elder two children had plenty of the old fashioned red, blue, yellow and green 'Lego' type 'opportunities'. But my eldest daughter heartily disliked such toys and had to work really hard to suceed at Maths whilst my son would play with such toys with deep absorption and was actually later found Maths an easy subject, and did very well at it. At the time of my research my youngest daughter was just coming up to the 'Lego age', so I rushed out and bought her a set of pink Lego [including a Lego hairdressing salon I believe!] hoping that the pink colour and 'domestic' subjects in the pink boxes would attract her [BTW Lego had had a lot of criticism when they introduced such a gender stereotypical collection as a pink collection 'for girls'. Me included]
Well anyway, youngest daughter loved pink Lego, played with it non-stop and was a whizz at Maths in later school life, turning out near the top of the school mathetmatics-wise and now using those skills in sales and marketing. May just be a coincidence and she would have been good at maths anyway, but I like to think my sociological research helped! And btw youngest daughter is now nagging me have I kept her sets of Lego for her 6 month old daughter. [Yes!]
So a little bit of gender stereotyping can be helpful when raising children and buying toys although nothing replaces common sense....
