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The last few years have seen Monster High dolls become one of the most popular and controversial toys. Based on the results of a specific empirical study the authors of the article attempt to find out why these dolls are so popular and what children see and what they fail to see in them and how preschool and younger school age girls play with these dolls. The study involved 245 parents and 50 girls in two age groups: 6-7 and 8-9 years. The adults completed the questionnaire which evaluated these dolls’ basic qualities. The children were involved in individual conversations in which each of the girls was asked the same questions. The children’s drawings depicting these dolls and the way they played with them were analyzed. The children’s and adults’ assessment of the dolls’ different qualities made it possible to register an obvious generational gap: what children perceive as being perfect is regarded by adults as being ugly and revolting. The children’s drawings suggest that Monster High dolls are perceived by them as “standards of beauty.” Most of the girls prefer these dolls to traditional ones. Watching the children play with these girls showed its essential part to be defined not so much by the toys’ image as by the general context of a child’s life: when using these dolls children play out most varied stories that reflect their personal experience. The article concludes by discussing the results of the study and possible risks these toys carry for preschoolers.

Relevance. This article is devoted to the problem of comparative analysis of preschoolers’ drawings on the theme “My family”, brought up in a full or incomplete family. This topic is extremely relevant not only because of the increase in divorces in Russia and the related difficulties of raising and developing young children, but also from the point of view of the data collection method. Typically, surveys of parents and other caring adults are used in such studies, while the “voice of a child” remains unaccounted for. The purpose of this work is to explore the possibilities of using children’s drawings to diagnose the peculiarity of the social situation of development in a modern family and the emotional well–being of a child in the family.

Research methodology and progress. The projective technique “Family Drawing” as modified by the authors was used in the work. The study involved 44 children from 4 years 9 months to 7 years, average age 5 years 10 months; 18 boys and 26 girls (41% and 59%).

The result of the study made it possible to confirm the invariance of the significance of various parameters of the children’s drawing on the theme “My family” over the past 25 years. Three key bipolar factors were identified for evaluating children’s family drawings: “Structured relationships in the family – Adult dominance”, “Inclusion in the family structure – Detachment from the family” and “Loneliness – Positive emotional connection with the father”.

Conclusions. These factors make it possible to record the peculiarities of the emotional well-being of modern boys and girls raised in full and incomplete families. Firstly, the girls’ drawings clearly show positive emotional well-being, identification with the mother and orientation towards traditional gender-role relationships in the family, while the boys’ drawings are distinguished by the dominance of the parental position of adults and the child’s identification with the family as a special social group. Secondly, the emotional well-being of children from single-parent families is clearly worse than that of children from full families, and boys from single-parent families find themselves in the most difficult social situation of development.