Why Boys Dont Play With Dolls - Essay Sample

Katha Pollitt brings up incredibly thoughtful questions. Why, despite years of feminism ideologies that seemingly tries to erase gender roles, do we have the same-sex roles among children? Pollit illustrates a crucial aspect of the entire story, boys getting trucks and girls getting dolls, right from their young age. Mostly, before relooking at the cognitive patterns between males and females, we cannot judge them for using what they are bought, or given at a very young age when they cannot distinguish the difference. With that in mind, it becomes logical to credit the environment as a major contributor to the sexist tendencies children exhibit. They are nurtured from early years to be what they become.

Even among feminist environments, the concept that gender roles be distributed indiscriminately does not work correctly. The same group will buy their sons trucks as toys and buy their daughter's dolls, demonstrating the difference between the two genders. In an ideal space, where children are indiscriminately provided with similar things, they are likely to grow up using the same things. If both are bought trucks, they will grow up using trucks, and the same would happen with dolls. Pollitt gives an example where she says that women love their athletic husbands, and find it quite reasonable when their sons copy them. They, however, become unease when, for instance, they find their boys doing house chores like baking, washing and so on. They do nothing to encourage their daughter to take up roles like athletic. At the birthday, every mother had at least worked extra hard to change her body in a bid to satisfy the perceptions of the American ideal female body. Daughters learn of those perceptions, but sons do not and grow up without feeling the responsibility to care about how they look.

Pollit just shows that parents are ready to go to any extent to teach their kids what society has created for them and feels should be taught to them. That is why parents will give girls dolls, and boys trucks, it will find it easy to let a girl do house chores, and encourage the boy to copy his dads athletic tendencies. Normalization of this scenario among American parents just shows the meaning of the phrase that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. In my opinion, I believe gender has a role to play, even though I do agree it should not be fixed. Either gender should be ready to interchange the positions occasionally. Gender roles have existed for centuries, and efforts to change them have been futile. Even though who strongly feel that there should be nothing as the sex functions, find themselves consciously or unconsciously practicing the same, or even subjecting their young ones to the same-sex roles. The environment they create then talks everything about how children grow up.

Children grow to reflect their background. The childs surroundings make his or her mind. Today, they are surrounded by influential media, personalities and so forth who almost enable them to make the distinctions early in life. No wonder it is quite easy for a male child to grab a truck in a retail store and leave out dolls, and a girl will do exactly the opposite. It is all about an environment which strongly directs girls to dolls and takes boys to trucks and related toys.

Work Cited

Pollit, K. (1995). Why Boys Don't Play With Dolls.