Posted by Marie IngramWhen a little boy shows interest in little girls toys, like Barbie for example, the tendency is for parents to react negatively. They usually take away the doll and replace it with a truck or some other 'boy' toy and make an issue that Barbie is for girls. Parents have a fear that their son might become homosexual or too feminine. That fear runs so deep that they do not allow their son to play with dolls. Barbie is a very sexual doll. She is a fully developed woman based on a sex toy from Germany. It is interesting how parents see this fully breasted, curvy doll as too feminine for their boy to play with; if anything they should be worried about her sex appeal. Parents see their son playing with a doll and freak out. Most of the time a boy's interest in dolls is temporary, a phase, and they soon move on to something else. However parents are scared that it is not just a phase and repeatedly make an issue out of it.
Members of our group work with children regularly and have noticed that boys love to play pretend with baby dolls and strollers just as much as girls do. We speculated that perhaps boys, as well as girls, have 'maternal' caring instincts, however our homophobic society repeatedly drives it out of them.
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