Toy Op-ed Reflection

Today, Americans have made the most progress on supporting gender identity, however, when it comes to our children's toys, we have regressed and continue to separate them by gender stereotypes. According to one of the New York Times articles, toy makers and marketers will create their toys based off of gender stereotypes, claiming, “That's what people want to buy”. I think this can be best looked at through the conflict theory, theoretical perspective, the reason being, my ability to identify multiple groups in society that have conflicting interests resulting in constant social change. One example of two groups with conflicting interests are people who believe in support and stereotypes, and the other against. Each group is fighting for power and publicity creating this constant social change. Another two groups are the gender stereotypes and how they are portrayed through toys, masculine versus feminine, this creates a divide and unequal opportunities for all genders. For instance, girls are much less looked down upon when playing with boy toys than vice versa. Our society has an unbelievable amount of influence on us and the choices we make. When it comes to the choices of these young boys and girls, there are many different factors that affect what they want to play with and what they end up playing with. One factor that plays a large part in what children play with are their parents. I think parents have almost “ultimate” control over their children, especially when it comes to raising them with specific values and purchasing them toys. Parents have the responsibility of teaching their child what is right from wrong and this has a lot of influence over what they tend to play with. For example, if a parent is against their daughter playing with Nerf guns, the girl will be less likely to play with them. However, this can also be applied to say that if a parent has the mindset of their child being able to play with whatever and be whoever they want, that mindset will most likely be portrayed through the parents actions and influence their child. Ways that parents have achieved this are allowing their children to pick toys from any shelf in the store, talking to them about being able to be themselves and choose toys based off of their interests, discussing how their peers might react and how to deal with that, and limit their exposure to gender-specific advertisements. Another large factor when it comes to children and their toys, are the toy designers and marketers themselves. For them, everything is about making money, their main way to do this is to target a specific crowd based off of interests and societies stereotypes. Due to it being targeted at a specific crowd, they are more likely to make sales off of that specific crowd. Societies standards for each gender trace back so far in time and continue to shape our everyday lives. For instance, when we were hunters and gatherers, men were expected to be the strong and aggressive ones or else they wouldn’t be as respected. Nowadays, boys are expected to play with a certain type of toys otherwise they are characterized as weak or feminine. Both weak and feminine have been associated with each other for a long time. This is perhaps the reason why boys are criticized much more for playing with “girl toys”, because it is considered feminine or feminine interests, which can then be associated with being weaker or less powerful than that of masculinity. When it all comes down to it, I doubt too much would change if the only change would be from toy makers making non-gender specific toys. I think the only way, we as a society, can change this gender stereotyping is by starting at home and teaching our kids this change.