Out of all the material this week, the article about girls being shown how to see themselves as sex objects piqued my interest. The article suggests that Bratz dolls and other media are poisoning our young children into thinking of their worth as the level of sexy they are.
Now, I have to say that even though I think it's inappropriate for dolls meant for 4 to 8 years olds to have fishnets and mini skirts, I don't think that it is dolls that are showing our children how to dress and act. Every summer I see mothers dressing their daughters up in little skirts and tiny bikinis. If we don't want our children to see themselves as sex objects then why are we dressing them up like sexually mature adults? Let's not blame the dolls because, let's face it, we don't have to buy them for our girls. It's up to the parent to instill self-respect in their child.
I also was very interested in Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development. Erikson states that children go through eight stages:
1. Trust versus Mistrust-birth to a year
2. Autonomy versus shame and doubt-1 to 3 years old
3. Initiavive versus guilt-3 to 6 years old
4. Industry versus inferiority-6 to puberty
5. Identity versus Role confusion-adolesence
6. Intimacy versus isolation-young adulthood
7. Generativity versus stagnation-during middle age
8. Ego Integrity versus despair-senior years
The idea is that if you don't complete each stage then you do not progress in a healthy manner in life. It baffles me that they can detect shame and doubt in 1 to 3 year olds. Our younger years really do effect us in the long term even though we don't remember a lot of them. I would love to know how Erikson came up with these stages. And is there a cut off where it's too late to work on these stages? Also, how did erikson get his research?
I could agree with you more that parents can help their daughters to have self respect and that we as a society shouldn't blame a doll on how our girls are acting. I grew up with barbie and they wore similar clothing to bratz and knew that those kinds of clothes were inappropriate. And Erikson's stages are hard for me to wrap my head around. the way i understand it is if you don't go through those stages do you not become a well rounded adult or will you basically be a burden on the world?
ReplyDeleteSome times I think that psychologists make problems where there are none to encourage repeat customers. I'm not sure that these stages are truly necessary to being a productive good person.
DeleteI agree. There will always be toys and television shows out there that are not appropriate. Obviously there is a market for it thanks to the parents who want to be friends with their kids. It is definitely our job, as parents, to ensure our children have values and self respect and are able to resist the temptations of owning a doll with fishnets. They really make children's dolls with fishnets? Yikes! I haven't down that part of the toy aisle yet. We are stuck on baby dolls. I am a little frightened.
ReplyDeleteI think the worst one was pregnant barbie. Giving girls dolls to baby is encouraging them to be caring, nuturing women, but encouraging them with pregnancy just invites disaster.
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