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Parents group targets violence-themed toys
Sunday, May 09, 1999 By Karen MacPherson, Post-Gazette Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Parents need help to counter the millions of dollars spent by companies marketing toys with violent themes, such as action figures with "blow-apart legs" and plastic submachine guns, a parent group told Congress last week in the wake of the Littleton, Colo., school tragedy.
Daphne White, founder and executive director of The Lion & Lamb Project, argued that the federal government should protect children from violent entertainment, just as children are shielded from cigarette and alcohol advertising and sales.
The government should create a clearinghouse of information about the impact of violent entertainment and ways to wean families from it, and add "violence education" to the drug, alcohol and tobacco education programs presented to schoolchildren, she said.
It has not been proved that playing violent video games leads to multiple murders, but studies have shown violence is a learned behavior. It can be curbed by parents.
"The relationship between violent toys and violence by children is just like the relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer," White said in an interview. "Not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer, but a certain percentage will.
"We are asking for the government to help protect our children from violent messages and merchandising. We don't support censorship. But it's shameless to market adult stuff to young children ... Violence is like a drug. It's addictive to kids. And it has been shamelessly sold to children for one reason, which is greed."
White said other factors have contributed to school homicides, such as the ease with which kids can get weapons and a lack of adult supervision.
"There are no easy answers to why these things happen," she said.
Diane Cardinale, a spokeswoman for the Toy Manufacturers of America, says parents should decide which toys and games they buy for their children. She says it's a question of supply and demand.
"Manufacturers make these items because consumers want to purchase them," Cardinale said. "But ultimately, it is up to parents to instruct children about how to play with them and in a safe manner."
White countered that it is "very cynical of the industry to put millions into marketing directly to children and then tell us that it is up to us to 'just say no.' It's not a level playing field."
White tuned into children's toys and games when her son was a preschooler. She said she was shocked at the level of violence she saw in entertainment aimed at that age group. In 1995, White, trained as a journalist, founded The Lion & Lamb Project, which she calls an "initiative for parents by parents." The aim is to help families find alternatives to violent toys, games and other entertainment.
Based in Bethesda, Md., the project has 5,000 dues-paying members and receives grants from charitable foundations. It has summarized results of several hundred studies about the impact of violence on children into a "Parent Action Kit," which it sells for $12.
Each year during the Christmas shopping season, White's group publishes a list of the "dirty dozen" violent toys and games, along with a list of recommended toys and games. The Lion & Lamb Project also sponsors "Violent Toy Trade-in Days," and "Peaceable Play Days," when children and parents learn how to play without violence.
Its Web site (www.lionlamb.org) recommends books about nonviolence.
White finds that many parents say they played with guns and watched westerns and war movies as children and didn't grow up to be mass murderers. She says the violence seen by today's youngsters is more gruesome, graphic, and desensitizing.
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