Toward a Sociology of Toys: Inanimate Objects, Socialization, and the Demography of the Doll World

Abstract

ALMOST from the moment of birth and for many years thereafter, children are in frequent and intense contact with toys in great variety, of diverse type, complexity, and composition. These toys are, from a very early age, an important part of the child's experientially perceived reality, operating in several related ways over and above their more manifest recreational purpose.' For example, they function as socializing mechanisms, as educational devices, and as scaled down versions of the realities of the larger adult-dominated social world.2 Furthermore, some toys are also companions to their child-masters. The pathetic fallacy 3 seems a misnomer when applied to the personification of a doll, a stuffed animal, or the like, by its child possessor. It does not take precise observational techniques to become aware of the relationship which such toys bear to the children who both personify and care for them. The fastidiously groomed doll, the conscientiously tended teddy bear, the earnestly and tenderly nursed patient are not exceptions but standard operational procedures for children implicated in these intimate, toy-populated worlds. They make up social milieux in which, unlike the everyday world of adults, the actors are inanimate toys rather than persons; but, like persons, such toys have identities imputed or assigned to them through a social process.4