A Feminist’s Guide to Holiday Toys for Boys
If STEM toys for girls are part of the gender equality playbook, what toys do boys need to be playing with to achieve our gender goals?
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I loooooove Halloween. It allows us to embrace our silliest and wildest selves. Plus, there is an abundance of candy, decorations, and games. What more could one ask for in life?!
This year we hosted a Halloween party for my five-year-old daughter and her friends. Picture six little girls, bubbling with laughter, dancing, and extracting gummy eyeballs from Jello without using their hands.
As the Halloween decorations are packed away, a twinge of disappointment settles in; after all, there's an entire year to wait until the next Halloween extravaganza.
Fortunately, the holiday season is just around the corner, promising its own set of delights!
There is no pause in a retailer’s calendar. Right now, retailers are swapping out the costumes and small-sized candy for all things Christmas.
And this means lots of toys will be purchased. Lots and lots of toys.
Speaking of toys, let’s talk about one of the most popular choices nowadays: STEM toys, especially for little girls. The current feminist movement is all about ensuring that our girls can keep up with the boys in the areas Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.
But as I think about the future society that my daughter and all her friends will live in, I have begun to wonder about what toys should be recommended for boys.
If STEM toys aimed at girls are meant to bridge the gender gap, what toys should boys be playing with to achieve the same goal?
Spoiler alert, I’m going to recommend that we make as big a fuss about boys playing with dolls and tea party sets as we currently do about girls playing with robots and science kits.
Let’s explore.
But first, a few points to make sure we’re on the same page…
1. Kids learn through play
It is through this fun, often unstructured activity that they acquire cognitive, physical, social, and emotional skills.
2. Toys are largely gender-specific
At any toy store or kids birthday party there is a very clear divide between the “pink” and “blue” toys. Trucks, hammers, and ninjas are for boys. Dolls, glitter paint and tea sets are for girls.
3. Gender equality is only possible if fathers take on more unpaid caregiving work
The reason we don’t have more women in certain roles and seniority levels is because more women than men are home every night of the week at 5pm to feed their kids.
Claudia Goldin won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics for showing that women’s labour market participation is due to their unpaid caregiving work (and not our lack of mentorship, thank you very much!).
Despite my enthusiasm for developments in AI and robotics, I cannot envision an alternative to humans caring for our young. So assuming we want to sustain the human species, we need more men caring for our offspring to achieve gender equality.
Therefore, just like we promote STEM toys for girls, we need boys to play with caregiving toys to achieve our gender equality goals.
The Rule Breaker Gifting Guide For Boys
This brings me to my top picks for holiday (or any occasion) gift giving for boys.
The toys I have selected build caregiving skills including communication, attentiveness, empathy, time management, flexibility and patience.
My top picks are unconventional. They aren’t mentioned on lists for best toys for boys. And, you’d I know I’d get an odd reaction if I gifted one of the toys below to a friend’s son (except for one of my friends who has a “smash the patriarchy” onesie for her little guy).
But that’s why I like this list. It’s very Rule Breaker-y.
#1 Tea Party Set
Tea parties nurture communication, attentiveness, and empathy. My daughter and partner, Dan, had epic tea parties and I could see how they significantly enhanced our daughter's social skills. Bee You Kids offers non-floral tea party sets in construction, space, and animal designs.
#2 Dolls
Dolls are the perfect and most direct way for honing caregiving skills. Manhattan Toys' Wee Baby Fella is a cuddly option, while Miniland offers diverse boy dolls, including special needs versions. Our Generation caters to older boys with realistic, life-like boy dolls.
#3 Cleaning Set
Challenge existing gender norms by introducing cleaning as a shared responsibility. Hape’s cleaning set provides a fantastic opportunity for boys to learn that it isn’t just women that do the house cleaning.
#4 Emotions Buddy
Fostering empathy is crucial as a caregiver. The Emotions Buddy plush let’s kids change the toy’s facial expressions and understand different emotions. It won the 2022 Play for Change in the Diversity and Inclusion category.
#5 Cooking And Baking Set
In this category it is important to be specific. There are cooking-related toys marketed for boys that geared to professional cooking (think: pizza parlour, chef kits). But the point of the Rule Breaker kind of play needs to center around the unpaid cooking one does to sustain those we care for.
Depending on budget, you can get a mini kitchen or a full-on grand kitchen set that mimic a household kitchen and aren’t overly ‘girly’.
For baking, there is a silver and grey Easy bake oven and a pretend baking oven which features a boy on the box.
If you were to assess the set of diversity and inclusion initiatives out there, you would be right to interpret that women lack something. We start early with STEM toys for girls and then continue to coding programs for girl teens, mentorship and leadership development programs for young women professionals, reentry programs for women after parental leave and on and on.
It feels like we are always trying to work on women in order to achieve gender equality.
The lack of “programs” for men would similarly lead you to believe that the status quo of how men are educated and the skills they develop are perfectly fine.
But actually, they aren’t. In fact, their lack of skills and education in caregiving is largely what is holding women back from gaining equality.
So, why not start young with these toys.
Just a thought.
Keep well,
✌️
J
P.S. I’m prioritizing shipping over perfection, so this post may not convey all my thoughts perfectly. I’d love comments or questions to keep the discovery going.
P.P.S. With thanks, as always, to my Junior Associate, ChatGPT-3.
P.P.S. A shout-out to Dan who is an active caregiver and a true partner in every sense of the word. He’s also an incredible sport when it comes listening to my ranting about gender inequalities and not taking it personally.
Joshy just took to playing with a baby doll - and I love seeing his nurturing side come out! I am all for it! Miss you!!