Parents’ favourite toys

Table 7.5.1., Steenhold (1993,d) shows the parent generation’s favourite toys. Parents were asked to name up to two toys which they could remember as having had special significance in their own childhood - toys which they remembered particularly well.

The parents’ favourite toys belonged to the 1960s and 1970s, predating the IT explosion and the electronic revolution on labour markets in the early 1990s.

The parents’ choices are - by contrast to many of their children’s choices - conventional and more or less reminiscent of the toys today’s children’s grandparents had when they were children. The parents could remember some of today’s trademarks from their own childhood and pass on their experiences of these to their children.

There is, of course, some common ground between the mothers’ and the fathers’ toys. The most popular are bicycles, LEGO/DUPLO products, teddy bears, balls, Nature/outdoors play with relevant equipment. Parents of both sexes also mentioned cars and toolboxes, although less frequently. Toys are otherwise gender-specific and this is in spite of the fact that at that time the trend in the Western hemisphere was for unisex products - regardless of whether these were toys or clothes!

The mothers played with dolls, especially baby dolls. However, they also played with Barbie dolls despite the controversies surrounding Barbie’s position in relation to the women’s liberation movement. They also played with implements, especially anything to do with household chores.

The fathers’ toys represented a wider variety of different types of toys. Cars were the fathers’ favourite playthings, followed by system and construction toys like LEGO/DUPLO products and to some extent also the classical Tekno and Bilofix products. As one would expect, typical boys’ types of play (electric train sets and football) are high on the fathers’ list. The fathers also have clear memories of toy weapons in social “good guys versus bad guys” games.

Weapons were almost exclusively remembered by fathers. Some of the mothers mentioned having liked drawing/cutting out/sticking or reading.  Both mothers and fathers indicated that the best games were segregated games where boys ands girls did not interfere in each others’ play. The fathers often indicated (three times as often as the mothers) that group play with 4-8 boys participating was significant and valuable while the mothers stressed the  importance of play with (girl)friends (five times as often as the fathers).

Table 7.5.1. Parents’ favourite toys

 Source: Steenhold (1993,d)

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