Meccano girls
SIR – With regard to gender division of toys (Letters, June 23), when I was a little girl in the Seventies, I asked each birthday and Christmas for Technical Lego and Meccano of the kind my (male) cousins owned. Instead I was bought dolls (which I systematically dismembered and buried) and if I did receive Lego, it was a model of a kitchen, or a bathroom. (Yes, really.)
The point is not that children should automatically be offered genderneutral toys, nor that boys should be encouraged to play with tea sets or girls forced to re-enact the gunfight at the OK Corral, but that, should they express a wish to do so, that request is granted without prejudice or comment.
I’m sure that 99 per cent of young girls offered a choice of activity with a parent would prefer to make a cake than strip down a car engine, but for the 1 per cent of us who would rather use a spanner than a wooden spoon, that opportunity should be available, and vice versa for boys.
Bramhall, Cheshire Penelope Sparrow