Little boys, the thinking went, were naturally indisposed to bathing. Bath toys not only made hygiene boyishly fun; they helped overcome the naughty urges that bathing tended to arouse: “The baby will not spend much time handling his genitals if he has other interesting things to do,” one government-issue child-care manual advised in 1942. “See that he has a toy to play with and he will not need to use his body as a plaything.” Enter the rubber duck.
Moby-Duck or The Synthetic Wilderness of Childhood, by Donovan Hohn, Harpers, January 2007, pg. 56
Damn boys, you can’t even trust them to Keep from clapping to think of the kittens.