Baby's first toys and the discursive constructions of babyhood

The material qualities and kinetic possibilities and limitations of toys and other objects for small children create a specific cultural microcosm. Within the confines of this environment, as facilitated and mediated by parents or other carers, children explore and develop their cognitive and motor abilities, and become specific kinds of socio-cultural actors, with specific kinds of subjectivities. In this study we investigate this process with respect to toys which enters the lives of many babies from the very beginning. We look at discourses of childhood and parenting. We examined the way baby toys are given meaning in the verbal and verbal-visual texts on their packaging, in advertisements, and in parenting magazines and books. We ask the following questions: - Which of the toys' potential meanings and uses are made explicit, which are not? - What kinds of activities with the toys are proposed? - What purposes are ascribed to these activities, and to the toys themselves? We try to show how the same toy can be used to articulate different discourses, for instance a discourse of play as carefree 'fun' and a discourse of play as serious 'developmental' work, and how such discourses highlight different aspects of the toys, and prescribe or suggest different ways of using them. Our aim here is to investigate which of the baby toys' potential meanings and uses are made or not made explicit in the texts we look at and the kinds of activities proposed with the toys. We are also interested in the purposes ascribed to these activities and to the toys themselves. We explore how baby toys can be used and we begin to explore how society says they should be used. Our man thesis is that 'babyhood', is socially and culturally constructed not only in texts and images, but also in other multimodal representations such as toys. And these communicative practices help to reinforce particular constructions of babyhood that should be at least discussed, if not challenged.