A Toy Is Just a Toy

Sex-stereotyped play may be virtually unavoidable, but that doesn't mean our kids will still be caricatures when they grow up. And as complicated as the influences on gender identity can be, the role of toys is far simpler. "Whether you think your child falls prey to the stereotypes too much or not nearly enough, in the end, it's just play," says Harvard psychologist Dan Kindlon, Ph.D., co-author of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys. "No link has been established between the toys a child likes at six or seven and the kind of adult he becomes."

Parents' fears that weapons foster male aggression and Barbie reinforces the idea that worth comes from a tiny waist and giant breasts don't hold up under scrutiny either, say experts.

And sometimes banning a toy can backfire, giving it a forbidden-fruit luster that makes it more appealing. Sam had amassed an arsenal fashioned from sticks -- a stick pistol, a stick rifle, a stick musket -- before I gave in and got him a six-shooter for his cowboy costume the Halloween he was 4. He played with that gun obsessively for six months, then ignored it except when other boys came over. His younger brothers, who are growing up in a house where guns are no longer anathema, have never shown much interest in them.

Bottom line: It's a noble goal to empower our sons and daughters to make their own way in the world and to liberate them from rigid definitions of what it means to be a man or a woman. But discouraging some toys and encouraging others won't do much to accomplish that. Besides, "it's the rare kid who's so gender-typed that a boy is 'all boy' or a girl is 'all frilly,'" says Gilbert.

Luckily, while you may not have much effect on your child's play preferences, you can influence his values. That's why it's a good idea to regularly voice what you believe, to provide a sort of reality check on the cartoon version of the world that kids create in their mind. It may not seem so at the time, but your child will pick up on it.

More important, you need to live the lessons you want your child to learn. "When kids observe dads who cook and moms who balance the checkbook, those images give them a frame of reference for how adults behave," says Kindlon.

Sam is 11 now, and I have to say I can't imagine a better-balanced kid: Sure, he's a third-base-stealing, maple-tree-climbing, all-male model of dirt and sweat and skinned knees. But he's also a tender sweetheart of a boy, one who reads to his brothers before bed every night -- Joe tucked under one of his arms and Henry under the other. Standing in his doorway, watching the good-night scene, it's hard to imagine that I ever worried about buying him a six-shooter.

Contributing editor Margaret Renkl wrote about finding out your baby's sex in the May 2003 issue.

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