Analysis of Why Boys Don't Play With Dolls

            Katha Pollitt in her article entitled, "Why Boys Don't Play with Dolls" illuminates a very powerful social movement in history that has succeeded in many institutions. This was the Feminist Movement that spawned reform in politics, the workplace, but has failed in the most important institution in American society, the family. Since the family is where children are initially socialized into the people that they will become, if the family fails to adhere to gender neutrality than the whole Feminist ideal has failed. It can be said the movement did cause a change in behaviors, where women were afforded equal rights under the law, the right to chose in in Roe vs. Wade, among other advances, but a change in attitude has not been seen in the family. Even when parents know that it is wrong to assume that their children will assume roles, defined by strict lines, they continue to push boys and girls in different directions. In the family, boys and girls are not equal, therefore any law that states this is just a formality and not a reality and if children fail to conform to their roles there is said to be an abnormality. The Feminist Movement, therefore, has failed thus far.
             Pollitt highlights how even scientists have sought to demonstrate genetic differences, proving that boys and girls have different preferences for toys and that even parents believe, at times, that if boys chose to opt out of sports, for instance, and spend time journaling or baking, there would be concern. Just as there a scientists, who believe that homosexuality in genetic, parents become concerned that their children are flawed in some way if they go beyond the gender roles assigned to them by tradition. The tradition has not been broken by Feminists and all scientific arguments for behavior deemed inappropriate for a child's sex is used a "back up" of sorts to explain so-called oddities in children. Parents swallow this hook, line, and sinker even if in the recesses of their consciousness, they know it is wrong to influence children to be anyone other than who they are.