Newswise — An August decision by Target department stores to discontinue the practice of separating its toy aisles by gender might be the first step in creating a new generation of play, a Creighton University researcher says.
Isabelle Cherney, Ph.D., a professor of psychology who has written and researched extensively on toys and gender, applauded Target’s move and said it’s a good first step toward prodding toy companies themselves into producing and marketing more inclusive playthings and encouraging complex play that can spur all kinds of beneficial consequences in what is essentially the work of childhood: play.
“For a large commercial entity to say, ‘We’re going to be different, at least in our labeling, because labeling has all kinds of consequences,’ it took courage,” Cherney said. “You would think it’s no big deal, but it is. It’s huge. It’s billions of dollars at stake.”
Cherney is presently working on a chapter about toys and gender for a book on the subject of how kids play with toys. The book will look at the contributions and consequences of toy selection for child development and socialization and also the biological factors at play in toy selection and play.
As Cherney has noted in earlier studies, the toys themselves and the way in which children play with them are often determined by the ways toys are marketed or colored. Toys marketed for boys tend to focus on spatial reasoning and hand-eye coordination. For girls, toys often focus on narrative and sequential play, typically involving a variation on playing a nurturing role.
But most of those determinations are in the hands of adults, who tend to think more about gender and less about the function of a toy. To an adult, a pink helicopter is more likely to be characterized as a girl toy, but try telling that to the 3-year-old boy who is using the chopper to complete a rescue mission over the treacherous terrain of the living room rug.
“It really has to do with play complexity,” Cherney said. “And can we design a different standard for play sequencing? Ask adults if a toy is feminine or masculine, and they’ll make it pretty simple. But ask a child if something is a boy or girl toy, and it will be an answer much more focused on the function of that toy.” Color is one of the major indicators in toy selection, Cherney said, especially for boys, who might shy away from toys of a pink or purple hue. But research Cherney has done suggests some of those attitudes might be changing.
In one sorting experiment in her play laboratory, Cherney showed pictures of stereotypically pink or blue-colored toys to children. Roughly 15 percent of the time, the children showed an indication that toy color mattered in determining a masculine or feminine toy. But when given a chance to actually play with the toys in the laboratory, that color indicator dropped to just 3 percent.
Cherney said she remains a big proponent of neutral toys that have the power to unlock the many areas of a child’s brain and leave them open to broader and deeper experiences. A child, she said, is much more open to subtlety and nuance and, since the work of childhood is play, providing as many possible avenues to play experience is crucial in a child’s development.
“The brain is very good at picking up nuances,” she said. “When we are born, we are all open to all types of play, but if we’re given only one type of play, that’s usually what we stick with. Play is the way we discover and differentiate ourselves and boys and girls have been shown to do it differently. But if boys were exposed to more of the way girls play and girls were exposed to more of how boys play, we bring in the best of both.”
Moving away from gender categorization of toys and instead focusing on what types of toys and play interest individual children is a business model Cherney has seen at work at Omaha-based Fat Brain Toys, where all manner of non-gender-specific toys are available and get equal interest from boys and girls.
“It’s not so much sex or age, but a question of what the child likes to do,” she said. “It is an explicit wish by (Fat Brain) to market their toys — which tend to be more educational — to a broader audience without stereotyping.”
As Target makes its move, Cherney said she’s hopeful it might lead to measures on behalf of toy companies themselves to create more gender crossover in toys, encouraging different kinds of play with different styles of toys for girls and boys.
“The underlying message from Target is, ‘We don’t want to sell to boys and girls in a different way. We don’t want to separate them.’ Now, the reality is, with marketing, it’s still marketed to the two sexes. You still have a pink and purple set and a blue and yellow set. But I think with Target’s decision, the younger generation, which is open to a little more ambiguity, maybe those stereotypes might become less rigid over time.”
RSS