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Why do girls get baby dolls fashion accessories to play with but boys get legos and tech stuff? What's the point of gendering toys that way?

Wouldn't it be better to let kids pick out toys that improve skills or promote their natural abilities? It feel like systematic discrimination to me.

8 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    3 months ago
    Favorite Answer

    I would agree. There are studies suggesting playing with puzzles or legos and tech stuff improves the child's later spatial reasoning or hand-eye coordination. It would be stupid to restrict that based on sex.

    edit: Playing with dolls doesn't prepare you for motherhood and there's zero evidence it helps any skill.

  • Jas B
    Lv 7
    3 months ago

    Because women have babies and over millions of years they have evolved the extra nurturing and caring traits needed to ensure our species survives,  It's called evolution.

  • Foofa
    Lv 7
    3 months ago

    Most modern parents aren't as "gendered" in their toy selections as parents in the past have been. But I've known a lot of girls whose parents provided gender neutral toys and activities. In every single case these girls became obsessed with pink and tulle by about age three. So despite a parent's best attempts kids tend to gender themselves regardless. 

  • 3 months ago

    Yes it should be acceptable for all young children to have all sorts of toys to play with, without their relatives getting upset about it!  My first born son was cared for by a Childminder with a daughter and she had a range of toys for them to choose from.  Sometimes he chose a doll, but usually he preferred toys with wheels that he could spin round.

    We bought him a little pushchair to carry his teddy, but mostly he'd chuck the teddy on the floor and fill the pushchair with sticks, which he then used as guns!  Our daughter used to dress up in a Spiderman outfit, and called herself 'Spiderguy'!  Or she'd build ginormous towers of Lego or cuddle lots of soft toy animals.

    Parents that only buy stereotypical sexist toys are limiting their child's development.

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  • Dick
    Lv 7
    3 months ago

    My parents bought girly toys for my daughters. My kids were more sports oriented than doll oriented. One of the kids got some really currently popular Barbie stuff for Christmas once. She dutifully played with it while my parents were there, gave them a look of disdain, and  never looked at them again. I'm not sure if toy choice is a result of environment or genetics.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    3 months ago

    The point is to prepare the children for later life. Women have always been the primary caregivers of children and men have always been responsible for moving society forward. Even today those realities hold true even if women are now co-opting all male roles. Having toys that teach girls to be good mothers and toys to encourage creativity in boys is simply put a good idea.

    And btw, in feminist society women are commonly left as single mothers, so teaching them to love children is even more important. 

  • Kieth
    Lv 7
    3 months ago

    The parents are, why don't you storm the capitol and stop them?

  • ?
    Lv 7
    3 months ago

    Tradition.

    Traditionally

    the role of women was to stay at home and care for children

    while the role of men was to find a job in the workplace.

    Really: same sort of thing with regard to pants vs. skirts/dresses.

    (Originally, pants were the wear of horseriders, which women were expected to not be, and that difference became a gender-based fashion principle in our culture.)

    I think

    most people in our culture in modern times

    allow girls to have the sort of toys that you describe as "tech stuff"

    but

    they still generally disallow boys to have the "girly" toys.

    Yes, it is discrimination, and it's "systematic" in the sense that our culture is a "system". It's not by nefarious intent of some still-living ruling class, but by cultural tradition.

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