ELC stuff

Some of the ELC stuff is not too bad – there is plenty of pink, but many of the “housework” toys are in neutral blue and green. (My daughter has a toy iron, which she loves. She’s mad on ironing. I have no idea where she gets it from.)

I do agree though that the gendering of toys, even for very young children, is overpowering. I remember going into Woolies, when it still existed, and being gobsmacked by the aisles of pink sparkly type stuff on the one hand and khaki/camouflage type stuff on the other. I find it interesting that even nowadays, when most people will at least pay lip service to women being able to do traditionally “men’s” tasks etc and vice versa, that this all goes out of the window when it comes to the marketing of toys.

My son had cookers, dolls, tractors and footballs, as does my 2-year-old daughter (though she definitely does show a preference for the more traditionally girlie toys, especially her doll “babies”, but I guess that’s a whole other topic!).