Gifts to Celebrate the Cultural Diversity of Children

Upon entering any toy store in the U.S., a person can be overwhelmed by the shelves dedicated to Barbie, and cute little dolls that do everything from brushing their teeth to roller blading. Toy companies definitely have spent many hours and money researching the infinite possibilities of things toys can perform. However, they've missed one important feature of children in the U.S. A growing percentage of children in the U.S. are from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds.

The U.S. is not considered a melting pot anymore. Ethnic groups are opting to maintain their cultural identities while adapting to the society in which they currently live. Therefore, many parents from various backgrounds would like to teach their children their own cultural values and enhance their self-image with respect to their own ethnic group.

Buying a gift for a child, who is, for example, Asian American, may not be easy for parents or for friends and relatives. Traditional books such as "Cinderella" and dolls such as Barbie are not going to give the child a sense of his/her roots. Even though Barbie attempted to market multicultural Barbie, the accessories such as clothes still do not reflect the wide variety of people in the U.S. An African-American child probably would not grow up to appreciate the history of the African-American with a copy of "The Adventures of HuckleBerry Finn." Simple crayons do not have certain colors for children to draw their own skin color. Even for a parent who wishes to enhance their child's understanding of people from different backgrounds than their own, the availability of toys and books from various ethnicity's is limited.

The Internet is a "God-send" in this case. A few web-sites are celebrating the diversity of children in the U.S. and are selling products which would be appropriate as gifts for a wide variety of children. These companies which may not be able to survive on a local basis can appeal to many families in the national and international levels. All of the web-sites listed below cater to children from many different backgrounds. On my links page, I'm going to start another link heading entitled "Multicultural Gifts" and will try to provide as many links as possible to companies who's aim is to provide a market for different ethnic groups.

The multicultural kid's site at http://www.multiculturalkids.com is one of my favorites. This web-site was started by a mother who wanted her adopted Chinese daughters to learn about their roots and increase her daughters' self-esteem. They have everything from books to crayons with "multicultural colors", fun dolls that speak many languages and resources for teachers. Another site similar is http://www.imeltingpot.com which was started by another mother in a multiracial family who noticed there were no products for children of different ethnic backgrounds.

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