Would You Encourage Your Lad To Play With Barbie?

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30794476
Yep it's another belter frm the Limp dums!

[janbee]

I wouldn't even encourage a daughter to play with a Barbie (either the doll or the Klaus variety!)

[lady-janine]

what a load of rubbish some limps talk.

[pixie373]

We had different toys, as both boys and girls here. Nobody was encouraged or discouraged, but the girls went for dolls and the boys for trains. Even that experiment with baboons (or chimps?) showed the same.

[Deskdiary]

This is absurd.

As Mamyalynne correctly states, children will find their own level of play.

My 6 year old boy has had ample opportunity to play with his older sister's Barbie stuff, but has never shown any interest whatsoever. He would much rather be in the garden getting muddy, or inside playing with his army toys or shooting things with his Nerf guns. He is, therefore, a normal 6 year old boy.

To suggest encouraging boys to play with dolls will make them more caring is nonsense, and is an idea right up there on the 'complete cobblers' scale just next to the Canadian couple in the news a few years ago who were bringing their child up to be 'gender neutral'.

I never played with dolls - and I'd like to think I am a very caring and nurturing father.

[Mosaic]

Can someone explain please: the question's about whether boys and girls should be encouraged to choose toys without adult intervention. What has that go to do with the physical features of the person quoted in the source article?
Several people have had a right old go about a woman's face. I suggest this is nasty, cowardly, bullying behaviour. Proud of yourselves, are you?

[Old_Geezer]

I think you missed point AP. You wrote that we were further up the evolutionary scale for there to be the instictive differences between the genders that I described. Trying to get boys to act as one expects girls to act would prove otherwise. It's about understanding what is so, not being worried about anything.

[Booldawg]

you cant really use the words 'encouraged' and 'without adult intervention' in the same sentence. They both have opposite meanings.

[naomi24]

I see nothing in Ms Swinson’s profile that qualifies her to advise on the way in which children are raised. Before she became an MP she studied Management and worked in marketing and public relations. When acquiring a job in a specific area, parliament appears to be the only place that requires no experience or specific qualifications. Why anyone would give the slightest credence to her guidance is a mystery.

[jim360]

Perhaps she qualifies as a parent herself?

The idea that children should be allowed to play with whichever toys they so choose is exactly the right one. This is slightly different from "encouraging" boys to play with dolls, I think, because that could translate into "pressuring" very easily. But of a boy points to a doll (Barbie or otherwise) and wants it then he should be allowed to have it, or at least not disallowed it on the sole grounds that it's a girls' toy.

[naomi24]

//Perhaps she qualifies as a parent herself?//

If being a parent qualifies her to tell the rest of us how to raise our children - and be afforded a public platform upon which to do it - there are an awful lot of us similarly qualified.

[sandyRoe]

Were GI Joe and Action Man dolls?

[Retrochic]

Barbie would not even get past my door I'm afraid -its a very bad role model for both girls and boys. Action man was never in our house for the same reasons.

[Svejk]

I was given an empty box and told it was an Action Man Deserter. (sob)

[jim360]

Aww, bad luck svejk :P

I had assumed that parents could give advice based on their own experience, although everyone else should feel free to ignore it if they so chose.

[Old_Geezer]

Yes Sandy they were. And as a kid I thought it strange my younger brother had one; but I put it down to it being just a big soldier really, much like all the small plastic ones I had and played battles with. That said, more difficult to get a few dozen Action Man dolls to stage a battle with.

[Retrochic]

Jim -you are assuming that children have the whole of Toys R Us in their living room to choose. Parents have a huge role in deciding what toys come into their homes. We have never allowed Barbie,Brats or other female toys, or male dolls that indoctrinate certain negative values or ambitions. My little pony was very popular in our house with our two girls and mechano and lego with the boys and girls . having said that we have no horse trainers or engineers in the family because of this lol!

[naomi24]

jim, They can - but they don't get a page on the BBC website on which to do it. The problem is politicians issue forth with their unqualified ramblings and there are people out there who assume they know what they're talking about.

[jim360]

Could the solution to that problem be to go toy shopping with your child in tow? This isn't always possible, without making an unpleasant scene for example, but if it is possible then I'd have thought it should be tried. Of course children shouldn't always be given what they want unconditionally, that just leads to spoilt brats, but if the young boy were able to choose between two toys of the same price and picked "the girls' one" then I can't see any reason for that wish not to be granted. And if they get bored of it later then, well, maybe there is a lesson in that for them not to make snap decisions.

The best way I'd have thought of putting it is that if a child expresses a particular wish for a toy that is not typically associated with their gender then it shouldn't be dismissed as "you can't play with that, it's a girls' toy" (or vice versa).

My Mum, who has worked in a creche for pretty much my entire lifetime, tells me that this sort of thing rarely comes up anyway, and without encouragement young girls tend to go for the dolls etc whereas boys rush for the cars (although what went on at the children's homes is anyone's guess). When it does come up, though, the worst thing that can be done is surely to discourage the child from playing with the toys they prefer and forcing toys they don't want upon them.

This works the other way, of course -- it would be equally wrong to suggest to a boy that he should play with a doll if he's not shown any interest in it, just to show yourself as a parent capable of challenging traditional gender roles.

[alavahalf]

Having been born and bred in Dunbartonshire where Jo Swinton loosely grapples with reality, I can assure you had I mentioned Barbie to my mates at school, I would have been unlikely to be typing this reply today.

You would only have done it once !

[steg]

Brainwash kids into being Jessies, aye right Mssssss