CNA Staff, Mar 1, 2021 / 02:48 pm (CNA).- The Hasbro toy company is now marketing a gender-neutral Potato Head family set showing same-sex couples and a baby, alongside a traditional family portrayal.
While the company has rejected reports that it would no longer sell individual sex-specific Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head dolls, a company executive has told a progressive business leaders’ magazine that the tradition of the brand is “limiting” because of how it presents gender identity and family structure.
“Culture has evolved,” Kimberly Boyd, a senior vice president and general manager at Hasbro, told Fast Company magazine Feb. 25. “Kids want to be able to represent their own experiences. The way the brand currently exists—with the ‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.’—is limiting when it comes to both gender identity and family structure.”
“The sweet spot for the toy is two to three years old,” Boyd said. “Kids like dressing up the toy, then playing out scenarios from their life. This often takes the form of creating little potato families, because they’re learning what it means to be in a family.”
A box for the gender-neutral family set shows pictures of a baby potato head in three different images: one where the potato head parents appear as a man and a woman, another where they appear as a woman and a woman, and a third where they appear as a man and a man.
Hasbro has also produced an animated image of two potato head dolls and a baby potato head. One of the dolls changes male characteristics, while the other doll changes between male and female characteristics and accessories.
The toy company did counter claims that Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head would change their names.
In a Feb. 25 Twitter post with several potato-related puns, the toy company Hasbro said: “your main spud, Mr. Potato Head isn’t going anywhere! While it was announced today that the Potato Head brand name & logo are dropping the ‘Mr.’ I yam proud to confirm that Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head aren’t going anywhere and will remain Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.”
The Fast Company report on the new developments for the classic doll contended that dropping “Mr.” and Mrs.” is a change that means “the toys don’t impose a fixed notion of gender identity or expression, freeing kids to do whatever feels most natural to them.”
The avoidance of a “normative family structure” in the boxed sets, the article said, is an approach that is “clever because it allows kids to project their own ideas about gender, sexuality, and family onto the toy, without necessarily offending parents that have more conservative notions about family.”
Fast Company magazine’s target audiences include self-described progressive business leaders. Its story about the potato head toy contended that traditional toys and storylines about relationships and families “can be confusing to kids who live in progressive milieus, where they are exposed to many different family structures.”
According to Census Bureau estimates, there are about 980,000 same-sex coupled households in the U.S. About 58% of these households are considered married. Same-sex married couples’ households are about half as likely as married men and women’s households to have children. Overall, about 180,000 same-sex coupled houses have children under age 18.
Same-sex couple households make up 1.5% of all coupled households, with 11 states and the District of Columbia above this average. Washington, D.C. has the highest percentage of these same-sex households, 7.1%.
Broken down by metropolitan statistical area, same-sex coupled households are most prevalent in the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley area, where about 2.8% of coupled households were same-sex.
By comparison, there are some 57.8 million households of married men and women, and some 7.6 million households of unmarried men and women. The Census Bureau on Feb. 24 released these numbers in a new report analyzing its 2019 American Community Survey.
Previous census inquiries wrongly classified many couples as same-sex because of recording errors, including men or women who mistakenly indicated they were the same sex as their spouse. The Census Bureau has claimed to have improved the error rate.
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Anna Lulis from Moneta, Virginia, (left) who works for the pro-life group Students for Life of America, stands beside an abortion rights demonstrator outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2022, after the court’s decision in the Dobbs abortion case was announced. / Katie Yoder/CNA
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 5, 2022 / 13:31 pm (CNA).
U.S. Catholic voters are split on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, but a majority agrees that abortion should be restricted and that there should be at least some protections for the unborn child in the womb, according to a new EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll.
The court’s June 24 ruling in the Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization upended 49 years of nationwide legalized abortion and freed states to regulate abortion as they see fit.
When asked whether they agreed or disagreed with Roe being overturned, 46.2% agreed, 47.8% disagreed, and 6% said they weren’t sure.
Catholic voters were similarly split on whether they are more or less likely to support a candidate who agrees with Roe’s dismantling: 42% said they were more likely, 41.9% said they were less likely, and 16.1% were unsure.
At the same time, the poll results point to apparent inconsistencies in Catholic voters’ positions on abortion.
While nearly half of Catholic voters in the poll said they disagreed with Roe being overturned, a large majority (86.5%) said they support some kind of limit on abortion, even though Roe and related abortion cases allowed only narrow regulation at the state level. The breakdown is as follows:
26.8% said abortion should be allowed only in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother;
19.8% said abortion should be allowed until 15 weeks when the baby can feel pain;
13.1% said that abortion should be allowed only during the first six months of pregnancy;
9.9% said that abortion should be allowed only until a heartbeat can be detected, and
9.1% said that abortion should be allowed only to save the life of the mother.
Of special note for Catholic pro-life leaders, only a small minority of Catholic voters — 7.8% — were aligned with the clear and consistent teaching of the Catholic Church that abortion should never be allowed.
On the other end of the spectrum of abortion views, 13.4% of Catholic voters said that abortion should be available to a woman at any time during her pregnancy.
The poll, conducted by the Trafalgar Group from Sept. 12–19, surveyed 1,581 Catholic voters and has a margin of error of 2.5%. The questionnaire was administered using a mix of six different methods, including phone calls, text messages, and email.
The poll’s results echo surveys of the general U.S. population on abortion. A Pew Research Center survey from March found that 19% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all cases, while 8% said it should be illegal in all cases. More recent Gallup data from May found that 35% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal under any circumstances while 13% said it should be illegal in all circumstances.
The Pew Research Center data also looked at Catholic adults. Thirteen percent said abortion should be legal in all cases, while 10% said it should be illegal in all cases.
A previous EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll released in July found that 9% of Catholic likely voters said abortion should never be permitted and 18% said that abortion should be available at any time. The poll similarly showed that a majority of Catholic voters (82%) support some kind of restriction on abortion.
Confused about what Roe said?
The poll’s results came as little surprise to Catholic pro-life public policy experts such as Elizabeth R. Kirk.
“This study confirms a phenomenon we have known for some time, i.e., that there is an enormous disconnect between the scope of abortion practices permitted by the Roe regime and what abortion practices Americans actually support,” Kirk, director of the Center for Law and the Human Person at The Catholic University of America, told CNA.
Kirk, who also serves as a faculty fellow for the Institute for Human Ecology and research associate and lecturer at the Columbus School of Law, noted the finding that nearly 42% of Catholic voters said they are less likely to support a candidate who agrees with Roe being overturned.
“At first glance that suggests that many Catholic voters wanted to keep Roe in place,” she said. “Yet, the study also reveals that 86.5% of Catholic voters want some type of restriction on abortion access.”
Why the inconsistency? “Most people do not realize that Roe allowed states to permit unlimited abortion access throughout the entire pregnancy and made it difficult, or even impossible, to enact commonsense restrictions supported by the majority of Americans,” Kirk observed.
“Many people who ‘support Roe’ actually disagree, unknowingly, with what it permitted,” she added. “All Dobbs has done is return abortion policy to the legislative process so that the people may enact laws which reflect the public consensus.”
Mass-goers more strongly pro-life
The new poll, the second of three surveys of Catholic voters tied to the midterm elections on Nov. 8, shows that the opinions of Catholic voters on abortion and other issues vary depending on how often respondents attend Mass.
Only a small portion of those who attend Mass at least once a week said that abortion should be allowed at any time: 0% of those who attend Mass daily, 1% who attend more than once a week, and 8% of those who attend weekly support abortion without restrictions. In contrast, 57.5% of Catholic voters who attend Mass daily, 21.5% of those who attend more than once a week, and 15.6% of those who attend weekly say abortion should never be permitted.
In addition to respondents’ apparent confusion about what Roe stipulated, the poll suggests that many Catholic voters don’t fully understand what their Church teaches about abortion.
Less than one-third of Catholic voters who said they accept all Church teachings (31.1%) said that abortion should never be permitted, and 5% who profess to fully accept the Church’s teachings said abortion should be permitted at any time.
Overall, 32.8% of respondents reported attending Mass at least once a week, with another 30.7% attending once a year or less. Only 15% agreed that they accept all of the Church’s teachings and live their lives accordingly, with another 34.5% saying they generally accept most of the Church’s teachings and try to live accordingly.
Pew Research Center also looked at how Mass attendance factors into Catholics’ views on abortion. Among those who attend Mass at least once a week: 4% said abortion should be legal in all cases, and 24% said it should be illegal in all cases, Pew found.
Strong support for pregnancy centers
The poll asked Catholic voters about a variety of other topics including abortion limits, Holy Communion for pro-abortion politicians, conscience protections for health care workers, and pro-life pregnancy centers.
EWTN
Among the findings:
Catholic voters are prioritizing other issues above abortion. Only 10.1% of Catholic voters identified abortion as the most important issue facing the nation, falling behind inflation (34.2%) and the economy/jobs (19.7%) and tying with immigration. At the same time, a higher percentage of Catholic voters chose abortion than crime (8.7%), climate change (8.1% ), health care (6.8%), K–12 education (1.7%), or religious freedom (0.8%).
About half of Catholic voters (49.3%) disagreed that Catholic political leaders who support abortion publicly and promote policies that increase abortion access should refrain from taking Communion, while 36.7% said they should refrain.
A majority (67.4%) of Catholic voters said they support public funding for pro-life pregnancy centers that offer pregnant women life-affirming alternatives to abortion, while 18.3% said they did not favor using tax dollars for this purpose.
A comparable majority (61.8%) said that political and church leaders should be speaking out against the recent attacks and acts of vandalism on pregnancy resource centers.
When asked about conscience protections for health care workers that would allow them to opt out of providing “services” such as abortion, a majority of Catholic voters (60.7%) said that health care workers should not be obligated to engage in procedures that they object to based on moral or religious grounds. Conversely, 25.3% said that health care workers should be obligated to engage in procedures that they object to based on moral or religious grounds.
Work to be done
What is the takeaway from the latest poll, where abortion is concerned?
“This polling shows that Catholics, like the overwhelming majority of Americans, support commonsense protections for women and the unborn,” Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow with The Catholic Association, told CNA.
“It also affirms other recent polling that found Americans by strong numbers support the work of pregnancy resource centers in providing women facing crisis pregnancies with a real choice and the chance to thrive as mothers despite difficult circumstances,” she noted.
EWTN
At the same time, McGuire added, “This new polling is also a reminder that more work needs to be done in catechizing Catholics on foundational Church teaching in support of vulnerable life in all stages — an effort that is continually undermined by Catholic politicians in the highest echelons of power who use their platforms to advocate for extreme abortion policies in direct violation of Church teaching.”
Nearly all of those surveyed (99.2%) said they plan to vote in the midterm elections on Nov. 8.
Denver Newsroom, Oct 2, 2020 / 05:26 pm (CNA).- As change on the US Supreme Court puts the future of legal abortion in doubt, some political leaders in New Jersey are seeking to strengthen and expand legal abortion through proposed state legislation.
Bishop Artur Miziński, secretary general of the Polish bishops’ conference. / Episkopat.pl.
Warsaw, Poland, Jan 3, 2022 / 04:00 am (CNA).
The Catholic Church in Poland will focus on reaching out to young people in 2022, according to a senior of… […]
1 Comment
So easy to imagine the scripted chorus of “ayes” from around the Potato Head boardroom–when the proposal was put to a vote! Just think–a new product line promising maybe a one-percent increase in overall sales and profits.
Back in 2015 the equally well-groomed board members of soprano/corporate America lobbied for gay “marriage,” with their over 400 (carbon copy?) amicus briefs unloaded on the U.S. Supreme Court–led by AT&T and Verizon, Dow Chemical, Bank of America, General Electric, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft, and the San Francisco Giants. (But, where is Potato Head?)
So, again today, the same boardroom rationale: stock market numbers might benefit marginally…the current annual drain on national spending—absent more homosexual households as from the next generation—was fantasized even in 2015 alone as “an estimated cost to the Gross National Product of over one billion dollars per year.”
Just think, that billion dollars of GNP is nearly one twentieth of one percent (0.0005%) of what’s packed into the Velcro $1.9 Trillion COVID relief bill! Every little bit helps! Save the GNP! Save Hasbro! As for the deplorables: “off with their heads.” And as for Mr. Potato Head himself: “castration!”
However late for the parade, the lock-step Hasbro lemmings vote “Aye”! A Ship of Fools.
So easy to imagine the scripted chorus of “ayes” from around the Potato Head boardroom–when the proposal was put to a vote! Just think–a new product line promising maybe a one-percent increase in overall sales and profits.
Back in 2015 the equally well-groomed board members of soprano/corporate America lobbied for gay “marriage,” with their over 400 (carbon copy?) amicus briefs unloaded on the U.S. Supreme Court–led by AT&T and Verizon, Dow Chemical, Bank of America, General Electric, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft, and the San Francisco Giants. (But, where is Potato Head?)
So, again today, the same boardroom rationale: stock market numbers might benefit marginally…the current annual drain on national spending—absent more homosexual households as from the next generation—was fantasized even in 2015 alone as “an estimated cost to the Gross National Product of over one billion dollars per year.”
Just think, that billion dollars of GNP is nearly one twentieth of one percent (0.0005%) of what’s packed into the Velcro $1.9 Trillion COVID relief bill! Every little bit helps! Save the GNP! Save Hasbro! As for the deplorables: “off with their heads.” And as for Mr. Potato Head himself: “castration!”
However late for the parade, the lock-step Hasbro lemmings vote “Aye”! A Ship of Fools.