children/youth

In this video, Brenda Laurel discusses her successful computer game for girls.  Detailing extensive research on what girls want, Laurel then shows us a some interviews with girls and a bit of the resulting video game, Rocket, which seems to focus heavily on navigating complicated high school relationships.  Laurel says that all critics love her game except the “male gamer who thinks he knows what games ought to be” and “a certain flavor of feminists who thinks they know what little girls ought to be.”

Laurel clearly sees herself as an advocate for girls and, at the very end of the video, mocks (that certain flavor of) feminist objection to the game.

In general, the video is a fascinating peek into the thinking of video game producers.  And it certainly raises the question of what a feminist video game could look like.

Start at 6:28 if you want to skip the details as to her companies and data collection:

See other posts on girls’ video games here, here, and here.

And, for evidence that the gaming world isn’t particularly welcoming to girls and women, see here, here, here, here, here, and here (NSFW).

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

My besties gave me a copy of the target toy catalog for 2009 and pointed out the front cover.

At first i thought it was just your typical run of the mill gender socialization propaganda…

White girl on the cover? Check.
Is she wearing pink? Check.
Is she wearing a tiara? Check.
Is she wearing a tutu? Check.
Is the tutu pink? Check.
Is she smiling? Check.
Is she playing with barbie? Check.
Is there a little boy in the image? Check.
Is he doing one of the following: making a mess, eating something or expressing anger? Check.

Ok, the basics are covered.

But upon further inspection, I realize that the barbie is holding Lego flowers…. and… wait a minute… are those church bells I see?!  …

Following up on a previous post about gendered gift giving guides at Lego and Toys R Us, I discovered something interesting.

I was intrigued by the Toys R Us guide because it asked the buyer to specify the gender of the child, but then tended to have more or less the same “personality” and “interests” options.  For example, below are the choices for girls and boys.  You’ll see that they are very similar.

Girl personalities:

Boy personalities (same, sans “Glamour Girl”):

Girl interests:

Boy interests:

So, why even ask about gender, I wondered?  I did a test.  For both boys and girls ages 12-14, I checked “techie” and “building” to see what I would get.

What I got was rather fascinating.  I can’t remember where I originally heard it, but someone somewhere observed that when it came to technology, there was a stereotype that men were  the engineers and designers and women were the consumers and users.  That is, both men and women might like technology, but men were active in producing technology and women just got to benefit from men’s hard, brainy work.

Well, that’s essentially what Toys R Us told me.  Remember, for both boys and girls, I checked “techie” and “building.”  Here is the top 24 gift suggestions for boys:

So that’s 13 building/engineering games (like Lego and KNEX), 3 ipod accessories, 4 portable DVD players, 2 MP3 players, and a few other things.

What do girls get?  Seven ipod accessories, 5 portable DVD players, 4 MP3 players, 3 laptop computers, 3 cameras, and one building/engineering game.  One.

Sure enough, Toys R Us confirms that girls may like technology, but boys build it.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

This 1959 ad for an airplane toy throws in girls as an afterthought in the final seconds (“Every boy wants a RemCo toy… and so do girls”). It’s easy to dismiss the ad as quaint and representative of a different time, but today’s advertising seems equally gendered, with girls thrown in as an afterthought (like in this dinosaur toy website) or neatly segregated (see here, here, and here).

Found at Vintage Ads.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Alongside a New York Times article about the distribution of food stamps was a set of county-by-county maps showing the percentage of different kinds of citizens on food stamps. What struck me was the difference between the “all recipients” map and the “children” map.

Darker blue = a higher percentage on food stamps:

All recipients:

Children only:

As you can see, the number of children on food stamps greatly outweighs the number of people on food stamps almost everywhere in the country. So, next time you think about the poor, remember how many of them are kids.

Via Gin and Tacos.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Joshua B. (of Jack-Booted Liberal) let us know about a post at Make about alternative toy warning labels they’d like to see. Dale Dougherty says,

…American kids are raised in an overly cautious manner, out of fear that they might get hurt, and we are limiting their ability to explore a wider range of experience.

The proposed warning labels:

The labels highlight the fact that we worry about some threats to children but not others, and also the way that the potential dangers of toys are often exaggerated (“Studies have shown that these toys…produce uniformly underperforming children who later become credit card abusers.”).

Not that I advocate letting your kid play with a plastic bag. But a giant appliance box with some catalogs to cut pictures out of and glue on as decoration? Best. Toy. Ever.

Also check out our post on the commercialization of childhood.

This cartoon illustrates how a work-free year is interpreted as lazy and irresponsible if you’re a working class person and a well-deserved treat if you’re middle class or better.

Found at The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Genuis, via Missives from Marx.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

These days the talk is about adult-olescence, or the seeming extention of adolescence well into ones twenties.  But the idea that children should have a childhood at all is actually pretty recent.  Before industrialization, when families tended to work their own land, children got to work as soon as they were able.  Being apprentices to their parents was the difference between life and death.

Industrialization brought a whole new kind of work: wage work that occurred outside the home.  At that time, it made perfect sense that kids would work, as they’d be working on the farm all along.  Only later did we decide that working outside the home was different than working at it and that, perhaps, children working outside of the home needed protection.  The first federal law regulating child labor was passed in 1938.

Below are some amazing photographs of child laborers from The History Place (thanks to Missives From Marx for pointing me to them).

The Spinning Factory:

Newsies:

Miners:

Factory Workers:

Seafood Workers:

Fruit Pickers:

Misc.:

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.