Doll Houses… Just for Girls?

Several years ago a friend of the family gave my parents a dollhouse and furnishings to them. At that time I only had my oldest son, so they were thinking that perhaps I would have a little girl to give this to.

My parents kept the dollhouse in their basement for a while and during that time my son really enjoyed role-playing with it. There were little people and really neat little furnishings. He had a name for all of the little people and who they were, it was very cute watching him.

Now I never saw anything wrong with my son playing with the dollhouse. I didn’t see him spending much time dressing up the people, playing with your hair etc. as I’ve seen some girls do when they play with dolls, but some men in my family thought that it wasn’t appropriate - they just didn’t like the idea of the words boy and dollhouse together I guess.

That dollhouse now sits in the attic in my parents’ garage just collecting dust.

Now I have two boys and we will no longer be having any more children. The dollhouse has been forgotten for a few years now, until recently, I began to think about it again.

You see my youngest son enjoys role-playing just as much as my oldest did and still does, and he likes to make houses out of leftover cardboard or any other thing he can find suitable. The two of them will use their little people, of course these people aren’t from the dollhouse, they are now Star Wars characters, motorcycle bike riders, etc. And they are basically doing the same thing my oldest used to with the dollhouse, that’s why I started thinking  about that really cool dollhouse just sitting, collecting dust, when instead my boys could be playing with it, but this time around I think that big dollhouse would be no match for even Darth Vader to invade.

So do you think dollhouses are just for girls? Are mothers like me that don’t mind their sons playing with dollhouses creating feminine men, as some would think?

photo credit: del frate claudio