“Why do you always get me a doll instead of a truck or blocks like bhai [brother]?’ whines six-year-old Sania*, as she opens her mother Fareeha’s* birthday present wrapped in floral pink paper.

“Her whining might have a point,” says Fareeha. “She is right. I have always bought her a doll or a kitchen set, etc. and car/trucks and toolsets for her older brother.”

In the toy shop, the salesperson asks Fareeha if she wants a toy for a boy or a girl, and she ends up buying the salesperson’s recommendation, typically categorised into ‘for girls’ and ‘for boys’.

Traditionally, girls are associated with the colour pink, and boys with the colour blue. Toys for girls mostly include dolls and their accessories such as make-up and jewellery, doll houses, kitchen sets, painting and art sets, etc. that are more sedentary and focus on caring and nurturing. Toys for boys include trucks, guns, soldiers or superheroes, which emphasise strength, physical activity, and adventure.

The days of telling little girls to play with dolls and little boys to stick to trucks are long gone. Kids should have the freedom to play and explore, unrestricted by typical gender roles

Toys give children an opportunity to develop various physical, emotional and social skills that affect their psyche. ‘Boy toys’ encourage more cognitive skills than what are known as ‘girl toys’ which teach empathy, imagination and developing perspective.

In the West, a discourse is taking place that this categorisation of toys probably has an impact on the personality of boys and girls as they grow up, and hence should be done away with.

Do toys really create a sense of gender in children? “Toys are one of the many factors that affect a child’s personality,” says Dr Nargis Asad, associate professor and chair of the department of psychiatry at the Aga Khan University Hospital.

“We cannot isolate toys for creating a gender sense in kids. As children, boys are told not to cry like a girl and to be brave, and girls are told how to sit properly, like a lady. Social norms and traditional roles also develop a sense of gender among children.”

Dr Asha Bedar, a clinical psychologist and a trainer on issues related to gender, abuse and trauma, agrees that gender socialisation starts from a very young age.

“Toys have a profound impact on a child’s mind,” she says. “Since children play with toys for several years, it becomes a long period of strong gender socialisation. Not just toys, water bottles and school bags are different for boys and girls, with those for boys being blue with superhero characters and pink for girls with princesses, ponies, etc. For children, here is a message of what is appropriate and what is not. Indirectly, you are telling them what their role is.”

Parents are reluctant to allow boys and girls to play with toys of the opposite gender, because they fear that their child would be judged for not adhering to the set social norms.

“One does not have to be so rigid about what toys they play with,” says Ayesha Ahmed, a 32-year old mother of two small boys. “Kids are better off playing with gender-neutral toys. After all, men make careers out of cooking and women are fighter pilots these days.”

“Parents don’t want boys to appear feminine so they are not given what are usually considered ‘girl toys’,” says Dr Asad. “If a boy picks up a doll to play with, his friends and peers laugh at him. Children should play with a mix of toys to develop diverse skills.”

With access to a variety of toys, a child can learn about and determine his/her role in society. They need to have the freedom to choose what interests them — be it maths, tools and cars for girls, or fashion, dolls and cookery for boys.

“Times are changing and to inculcate various attributes in children, a lot of parents do not believe in gender discrimination when buying toys,” says Dr Bedar.

Ahmed has bought one of her sons an elaborate kitchen set, as she wants him to familiarise himself with cooking and kitchen work. “There is no harm in boys learning to cook or stitch, as they need these skills, especially when they go abroad to study or live independently, while settling in their careers,” says Dr Asad.

If boys are discouraged from playing with toys that are considered feminine from an early age, they may not develop skills that they might need later in life. Boys consider cooking and childcare as women’s roles, because they are discouraged from doing these chores even at play, while at the same time they always see their mothers doing these chores.

It is said that the toys one plays with in childhood affect one when it comes to the choice of career. “Girls nowadays are entering all fields — they are scientists, engineers, pilots, and whatnot,” says Sajida*, who is in her 30s and a mother of two daughters. “So why not encourage them to be adventurous and active from a young age rather than restrict them to passive and caring roles?”

Dr Bedar disagrees slightly. “To say that a child’s career choice is shaped [solely] by the toys he/she played with would not be right,” she says. “While toys do have a strong impact, they are just one aspect. Toys are part of gender socialisation, which has an impact on one’s career choice.”

Dr Asad agrees. “We see careers with a gender lens,” she points out. “A surgeon is always a man, and a teacher or nurse is always a woman. This has been ingrained in a child’s mind about his/her role in society.”

Interestingly, strongly gender-typed toys might also encourage attributes that we don’t want to foster in children. For example, make-up and dolls for girls would include a focus on attractiveness and appearance, perhaps leading to a message that the most important thing for girls is to look pretty. For boys, the emphasis on violence, weapons, fighting and aggression might also be less than desirable in the long run.

Children are very impressionable and learn from their surroundings, from what they see and the messages they get from the people and things around them. If girls are given the constant message that science, technology and construction are not for them, and boys that cooking and caring are only for women, they would find it difficult to adopt these roles, much as they might yearn to do so.

• Names changed to protect privacy

The writer is a freelance journalist and tweets @naqviriz

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 26th, 2022