Walking through the toy department at Wal-Mart trying to see how toys have an impact on socializing children really shocked me. I grew up with my brother having me build Lego castles and racing hot wheels around the kitchen table with him. I realized that I would have been playing with the wrong toys if my parents had bought me my own toys. From the girls" section, I was learning that it was aright for girls to want Lego's and cars, while at the store I would have been down the wrong isle. The isle I should have been down is filled with pinks and sparkles. .
At Wal-Mart the toy department is four different sections: the girls, boys, baby, and board games. The girls through the socialization of their toys are given the impression that they have to be caring, mellow characters. The kitchen set, full of pink dishes, food, and place to wash the dishes tells them it's their job to do the cooking and cleaning. With this they are already set up to inequality with house hold chores. The boys" section has nothing like this in it, telling them they should not do this sort of thing. If the boys to not play kitchen why would they then do that work when they are older. In the boys section there were toys telling them to fight. Teaching them that that is what they should be doing. My favorite was this pair of big green boxing hands, from "The Hulk". With things like that is does teach the boys to be aggressive, but it also goes farther then that in teaching them to get what they want, stand up and fight for what they want and later think. There was nothing like this in the girls" section. .
Parents do play a big role in the socialization of their children in what they buy for them. I don't think that a parent should go out and buy a pink kitchen set for their 3-year-old son, but maybe buy him a set of dishes and some food to go with it. And a 4-year-old daughter doesn't need to have a pair of boxing gloves, but perhaps a light up laser sword.
