A girl could like boy toys more, where a boy could like girl toys. This is a never ending cycle but it does raise worry on parents when they see that their child wants to play with something like a toy gun that pops smoke or a tow sword which promotes only aggression and violence. Whereas girl toys in commercials show Ponies, barbies or jewelry making. These show skills on how to share and gain a social behavior skills. But for boys they have commercials of hot rods on a track which crash, or bad guys being tossed into a Lego prison.
Just as you learn different rules by whom you surround yourself with, gender is that same way. Journalist, Clive Thompson, observes that “males and females display different types of behaviors;” these behaviors that are acted upon are setting guidelines as “children recognize certain sex-role identities” (Atwan 82). This point is also proven in Frank McCourt’s novel From Angelas Ashes when the mother character, Angela, has to stay home and take care of her family and can’t do anything about the father taking the hard earned money to the pubs to drink it all away. With these influences on gender roles in society it is understood that “boys tend to be more aggressive and competitive, while girls’ behavior is generally more social and accommodating,” (Atwan 82). These classifications among men and women help to set a barrier to show the differences each gender has on society and how these common tendencies they acquire start to develop who they are.
Money predicted that if you are mislabelled at birth and subjected to inappropriate labels and treatment before the age of three, then the infant would then acquire the identity of the gender that they were labelled. Support comes from the case study of David Reimer who was born a boy but after circumcision went wrong he was raised as a girl until his early teens. Doctor Money reported that David assumed the role of Brenda and adopted a female gender identity. However, the reality is that David never truly assumed the female identity, wanting to play with boy’s toys and being referred to as ‘cave man’ at school due to masculine tendencies. As soon as he found out he was a boy he instantly acquired that gender and went on to live as a boy at the age of 14, implying that biology is the overwhelming factor.
In Time Magazine article, “Girls, Interrupted: Children Pay a Price When Childhood Ends Too Soon” written by Caitlin Flanagan, she addresses the concern for girls reaching puberty at an earlier age. In summary, Flanagan believes, “it’s cruel to expect adolescents to make the change from girl to woman without any special protections against the corrosive forces of the world, without sufficient time and privacy to work out the big questions of their lives” (Flanagan, 2011, p. 60). In a healthy father and daughter relationship, a young girl looks to her father as her protector, hero and Prince Charming. A little girl from the age 4-12 doesn’t think on sexual terms but more on fairytale fantasies when comparing the man she hopes to marry someday is similar to her own father. According to Freud, in the psychoanalytic theory, a girl’s sexual attraction to and intense love for her father is called the Electra complex (Hyde, 2007, p. 33).
In the essay “Why Boys Don’t Play With Dolls’ by Katha Pollit she takes a dismissive attitude towards any kind of study or theory which suggests that there are innate differences in behavior between boys and girls. The blame for children’s gender differences and their personalities is put on their upbringing and the culture in which they grew up. There is no doubt that our society encourages and exaggerates gender stereotypes through things like the messages put out by the media and the toys we play with as kids, but boys and girls would probably still act differently if they were brought up in a neutral environment. In the article “The Gender Blurr” by Deborah Blum she says “Do the ways we amplify physical and behavioral differences in childhood shape who we become as adults?’ The answer is yes it does influence the way children are raised and the way they deal with their lives as they grow older. Gender roles vary.
Young children are interested in playing with many of the same things and not just gender specific toys. However society, the marketed media and parents inadvertently gear children towards playing with traditional male and female products. The article “Sweden Makes my Gender-Free Toy Christmas wish Come True” by Sarah Ditum exposes a toy gun made for both boys and girls. The Nerf Gunn is the step in the right direction toward breaking down the gender divide. Girls will be encouraged to step out of their gender roles and play with a toy usually marketed to boys .
Why Boys Don’t Play with Dolls Thesis Instead of looking at kids to “prove” that differences in behavior by sex are innate, we can look at the ways we raise kids as an index to how unfinished the feminist revolution really is, and how tentatively it is embraced even by adults who fully expect their daughters to enter previously male dominated professions and their sons to change diapers. Main Points Even the most attractive, I’m willing to bet, had to suffered over her body’s failure to fit the impossible American ideal. Women’s looks matter terribly in this society and so Barbie, however ambivalently must be passed along. Could it be that even sports- resistant moms see athletics as part of manliness? That if their sons wanted to spend the weekend writing up their diaries, or reading or baking, they’d find it disturbing?
And mostly, the parents choose school and playing a classic instrument to be the first priorities. Her methods are very strict and hard – not funny and pedagogical like the most do it in the Western world. Amy Chua means that Western parents often are too soft with their children. If the kids want to give up at something, they respect that. She would keep pushing her children, and keep motivating them so they can achieve their goal, even if the kids doesn’t want do.
We are after all dealing with children and not lab animals. Yet in his article Crister is trying to persuade the American family that punishing children for over eating is a good idea. The author does not explain exactly how his solution should be carried out or put into place. He also failed to state what the consequences of these actions might be. The author uses argumentation to try to persuade the reader that many parents do not care what their children eat.
Parents are not prefect and everything they say may not be the right thing to do, but pleasing them is the best policy so kids should do it anyway. Twain warns “the best policy in the long run” (291) is to do what your parents say even when it is wrong, because if you do not and get caught, punishment will be waiting for you. That is advice that we have all heard, but find it impossible to follow while growing up. Since most children do not