Living: In All Seasons, Toys Are Us

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For grownups these are severe and unsettling judgments. The imagination is, after all, the foundation of the moral sense. A child watching a companion torturing the family pet objects, "How would you like it if you were a cat?" Once he guesses what a cat feels like, "doing unto others" is no longer a mere slogan. Interfere with the imaginative process and conceptions of sympathy and maturity are slowed to a crawl.

But are these games and toys and shows really undermining childhood? Certainly they are hyped too heavily and break too readily, but some also manage to play vital roles. In Goleta, Calif., Katy Clarke, 35, mother of three boys, finds little conflict between her antiwar sentiments and the iron- filings-and-magnet relationship her sons have with G.I. Joe. "For right now," she believes, "the boys are playing pretend. It develops their imagination. It gives them control. All those things are things I'd like my children to experience." In Portland, Ore., Marianne and David Sweeney were not thrilled when their five-year-old daughter Kate began watching She-Ra. But, says Mrs. Sweeney, a fifth grade teacher: "I cannot argue with what she is responding to -- a very strongly drawn woman. I'd much rather have her see that sort of thing than the strong women's roles going to witches. What really matters for these kids is that there is a power that takes care of the evil and the injustice. That is very reassuring."

Early Childhood Center Teacher Betty Ewen reports that "sometimes a child having trouble separating from his mother will bring in one of the more 'powerful' toys to give him the feeling of power. One boy having that problem arrived with a play gun belt and felt safer. He never took the belt off. And there was an increased confidence in his behavior." Ewen has no love for the more violent of the top ten toys, but she notes, "Twenty years from now I don't think they're going to make for poor mental health."

Indeed, 60 years ago, people complained about another kind of war toy. To them Chesterton retorted, "Only this Christmas I was told in a toy shop that not so many bows and arrows were being made for little boys because they were considered dangerous. It might in some circumstances be dangerous to have a little bow. It is always dangerous to have a little boy. But no other society, claiming to be sane, would have dreamed of supposing that you could abolish all bows unless you could abolish all boys."

, Children have always shown surprising resilience. They have been known to bounce back from divorce and war, from the confines of the ghetto. What are a string of plastic playthings and yelping programs compared to the trials of the real world? Ah, but do they help at all to prepare a child for that real world? Perhaps more than any adult can remember. Once upon a time parents complained about silent movies. Grown, their children squawked about radio and their children about double features and comic books. It is the turn of their children, today's parents, to be concerned -- legitimately -- about TV and electronic toys. But even in the most rigid atmosphere, young minds have always been capable of coloring outside the lines and making up the most outrageous fantasies about cracks in the ceiling and ants on the sidewalk. Why should they stick to the newfangled script just because a honey-voiced announcer or an animated figure gives the orders?