Gender specific toys

As I mentioned in another post I made I work at a daycare center with young children and for this post I chose to review children and gender specific toys. My previous post reviewed children and their preference of colors onset from a young age with the specific example of pink play dough being more popular among girls than among boys. This article I chose to review covers the premise that toys are more recently being marketed for specific genders in the media. One specific example from my article explained the promotion of gender specific toys in the media like this: "In the 1970s, according to Sweet, few children’s toys were targeted specifically at boys or girls; nearly 70 percent of toys had no gender-specific labels at all. Many toy ads seemed to deliberately flout gender stereotypes—depicting girls driving toy cars and airplanes and boys playing with kitchen sets and dolls." The article continues on how since the 1970's that has changed drastically in the media. Almost as if we have moved back in time to the promotion styles of the 1950's. The effect that this has on children is giving them preconceived notions that boys have to act a certain way and girls have to act another. This result greatly impacts development in children and adolescence. The attached article further reviews the subject and effects it may have on developing minds and how they act in reaction to what they see on TV and on the boxes their toys come in.

 http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2015/08/12/how-gender-specific-toys-can-negatively-impact-a-childs-development/