“Boys have feelings.”That’s the simple message behind Wonder Crew dolls, which Laurel Wider, a psychotherapist based in Northampton, Mass., developed in 2015 after her son came home from preschool and announced that his teacher had told him: “Boys aren’t supposed to cry.”Ms. Wider said she remembers feeling “floored.”“I couldn’t imagine how he could get this message,” she said. “I’m a therapist; we talk about feelings all the time at home.”But she realized that despite her efforts, her son was still being exposed to rigid ideas about gender. “There was a wave of toys coming out around that time, toys that were encouraging girls to get involved with STEM, changing the way girls see themselves, and I thought to myself, ‘What about boys?’,” she said.

Source: New York Times May 14, 2018 09:00 UTC