Sure, we have created an obligation and a bond to our children through toys, but let's honestly admit that at the same time we have created a bond and an obligation to a booming commercial toy industry. Studies show that when toys are available, young children are less likely to play with people and more likely to focus on the toys. By inference then, when children play by themselves with toys, they are less likely to beat up on each other. This logic works only as long as children have their own toys to play with. Thus, in addition to the tools of behavior management, we find in that same toy chest, the first forms of personal property in our capitalist society.
Material goods are for the adult what toys are for the child.
Toys as material possessions also deliver the first messages in consumer indoctrination into the propaganda of commodities. We are continuously presenting children with novelties, thereby creating young consumers who are perpetually unsatisfied, restless, anxious and bored. Realistically, we do not buy a lot of toys for children just to control them, nor especially to educate them in distraction for the purpose of suppressing political protest. But we do believe that toys can educate them in imagination, and can even advance the development of some cognitive skills. Whether or not this is the case, they do seem to develop individual concentration by teaching us to play alone.