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DeVliegendeHollander comments on Open Thread, Apr. 13 - Apr. 19, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Me too.
I noticed that at least here in Germany childrens toys are presented much more gender specifically than they used to - think pink ponys and armed space rangers. But also boys books and girls books. I think this is more than just improved marketing. The entire domains of boys toys and girls toys diverge. Previously often one set of toys was sold for and used by boys and girls alike. The play differentiated along roles but still overlapped. But ot any longer. I wondered: Why is that?
TLDR: When roles do no more work to match expectations of the other gender the need to do so is satisfied by choosing other aspects of interests and behavior that pattern-match against these expectations.
My reasoning was as follows:
Assume that there are optimum male and female stereotypes with respect to preferrability and that these are known to both genders. Stereotypes mean combinations of observable properties or behaviors that pattern-match against the optimum stereotype.
This is plausible: At least for body attractiveness preferences are closely modelled by the other gender according to this study so I'd guess that basically the same holds for other aspects of preferrability (and status in case status being gender-specfic).
Traditionally many properties did align with (gender-specific) roles - roles actually being kind of stereotypes - or more precise: The optimum stereotypes projected down to the properties captured by the roles. So matching a role automatically netted you a fair match on the optimum stereotype.
But if roles do no longer work as a vehicle for this pattern-match because the roles are stripped of their differentiation potential via societies changed perception of roles - by precisely taking gender out of the roles the remaining pattern-match is weak. But the need to learn and aquire a match of the optimum stereotype doesn't go away. The pressure just goes to other areas - interests, preferrences - that pattern-match against the stereotype (which presuably also slowly changes).
Side-note: In the toy-case whether this pattern-matching was done by children or by their parents doesn't matter much for this discussion.
I have some darker interpretations. If you look at pictures on childrens school bags, workbooks etc. the boy version is a spiderman sending the message to hang on net ropes like some idiot tarzan and the girl version is some little magic fairy princess sending the message just be there, be pretty, don't do much. So both are very, very detached from what they are supposed to do at school or in adult life. It is a "be useless!" kind of message. Is it perhaps an anticipation of a world where 80% will be unemployed?
Without this hypothetical anticipation of a world of 80% unemployment, would you expect children's bags, books, etc., to be decorated with pictures of people sat at office desks working on spreadsheets, or plumbers fitting pipes together, or something? Were children's bags, books, etc., ever decorated that way before?
I think the explanation is much simpler. Children enjoy imagining themselves as superheroes, princesses, etc.; movies, television shows, books, etc., featuring such characters become popular; children buy (or get their parents to buy) products with their favoured characters on. No conspiracy needed. And why are the superheroes and princesses and suchlike not shown doing anything interesting? Because extra clutter in the imagery would make the presence of the characters less obvious and so reduce the immediate appeal of the products to their target market.
My view on economics: businesses exist to serve customers, where the customer is defined as the person who pays, not the person who uses. For example we are mere users of Google, not its customers, those are the advertisers. And in this case it is the parent. The rational vendor caters to parents, not children. He thinks: what kind of message do parents want to send to children? And while of course it is not something boring or dull, Dexter the cartoon scientist beats the Spiderman and the fairy-princess in the cater-to-parents domain. BTW before, as far as I can remember, they were pretty plain items, not too decorated, in my childhood, that is not ideal either.
Right, probably not a conspiracy, it just happens to send wrong messages...
It's not clear to me that
because the things parents want include (1) happy children and (2) children who aren't complaining about not having the stuff they want. Accordingly, if children prefer Spiderman and fairy princesses, they will often get them.
Sounds like too many parents being a bit undisciplined and giving in too easily. I can empathize with that, having a 14 month old, but still I wish we could be as adamant as our parents, whose "no" was really a 99% no, and not like our "no, well, unless you yell a lot, in which case yes, as my nerves aren't made of steel and avoiding pain for me is not always less important than principles".
No, it sounds like a lot of parents prefer to have happy kids without a message rather than unhappy ones with one.
Happiness is not simply getting what one wants, often it is closer to learning to be content with what one can have. Seriously, simply fulfilling childrens wishes, hoping this will make them happy would be seriously bad parenting, they would quickly become spoiled and basically want everything right now, the difficult yet necessary trick is figuring out how to make them happy while not getting everything they want to.