Toys and gender - Is it nature, nurture, or both?
Categories: Babies, Toddlers, Preschoolers, Fun & activities, Development
Before I was a mom, there were a lot of things I was never going to do as a parent. I was never going to let my kids watch TV, I was only going to feed them homemade, organic food. I was never going to let them play with plastic toys adorned with licensed characters. And I was certainly going to make sure that most of the toys in our house were gender neutral.Then I gave birth and became a real parent, and all of that (or at least a lot of it) went out the window. So when my girls, at around 12 to 18 months, embraced the baby dolls and princesses kind of girlhood, I figured it was because I hadn't given them enough trucks and tools to play with when they were babies.
But according a psychologist at CNN, many of the differences we see between boys and girls is actually hardwired at birth. Boys are more likely to enjoy watching mechanical motion, walk sooner, and are more fearless. Girls enjoy looking at human faces, are good listeners, and talk earlier than boys. Do these differences eventually lead to different interests in toys? She says that in one study, when toddlers were shown photos of dolls and vehicles, the girls tended to opt for the dolls, while the boys chose the trucks.
I'm not 100% convinced. I think that 18-months is long enough for kids to be influenced by their parents, especially, but also by the world at large. Though my girls largely ignore their train table and trucks, they'll toss their baby dolls aside to go on a bug hunt, play kickball, climb a tree, or to kick our butts in a rousing game of HyperDash, because being active is something our family values, something they caught on to early on. But by and large, their games do tend toward the imaginary kind where they're the nurturing mother/fairy godmother/caretaker and someone is a baby/sick/in need of care. I'm not sure if that's because they're girls, or if it's a learned behavior. More likely, it's a combination of both.
What do you think? Are kids hardwired at birth by their gender, or do we influence the way they play and the toys they choose?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sabrina 8-23-2008 @ 5:57PM
I had my daughter first, lover of all things frilly and doll-like and pink, very very pink. Then my son, who we didn't buy any new toys for until he was about a year old. She does NOT play with trucks and cars, but likes the cars movie and will play with her brother's tool set. He likes all kinds of dolls and dress up, but his favorite things are vehicle toys. Cannot get enough of them, sleeps with them clutched in his chubby-fingered grasp. He is enthralled by any moving vehicle to the point that I cannot get him through a parking lot unless I pick him up and physically take him into the store. He would stand all day gazing at all the cars. I really think it's nature now, but before having kids I never thought it was. I raised them essentially the same (although I think I coddle my son a bit more), and until he turned 1 last year, he'd never played with anything but infant and girl-themed toys. They are just different, in exactly the same way my grandmother said that they'd be, and I believed her to have outdated notions of female/male social identity. *sigh* All that sociology degree work down the drain I guess.
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Kellie 8-23-2008 @ 7:16PM
My 5-year-old son saved up his allowance and bought a Cabbage Patch Doll today ( a girl). My hubby cringed for about a second, but more because he is concerned that our son will get made fun of, not that the doll is a problem.
That being said, he always wants star wars or transformers toys. We have never really directed him toward any specific toy, but you can see where he is completely different than my friends girls who are the same age.
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Erin 8-23-2008 @ 11:55PM
I think that letting your son play with a girl doll will increase his sensitivity towards woman. It's a great asset for him to learn when most of the teenagers I know have a very unruly opinion about woman. Encouraging love for a smaller/helpless/cute/girl can be rewarding and increase the chance that he will become a better man and maybe a doctor/lawyer that works for the greater good of a community.
My three year old is engrossed in cars but a lot of them are girlie colored (pink). I think it's his appreciation for colors and I don't limit his senses by what I think he should play with. None of his friends make fun of him and even play with some of the dolls he acquired from his grandma (who constantly tries to turn him into a girl).
All in all you can't think that your kid will be gay because he grew up playing with dolls. Being gay or made fun of is nothing you can prevent. All children are cruel and have to learn to deal with it like we did.
Sarah 8-27-2008 @ 2:01PM
My son is also 5 and he is into all the action figures but he loves Barbie movies. A lot of times I find my 3 yr old girl in my sons room playing with trains and my son in her room cooking. I always made a point of keeping everything neutral. I do understand your husbands worries because kids start early on making fun of other kids. I defiantly saw the change when he entered pre-K and the kids can be very mean. You can see the difference in how kids are raised. I would not raise my child differently but I want to keep him from getting his feelings hurt; because he is a very sensitive little boy.
It amazes me on the topics that 5 yr old discuss. I listened to 2 girls in my son's class discussing how fat they were and they actually very normal size. There are a lot of topics I did not think I would have to discuss with my kids until they were at least in middle school.
Karin 8-24-2008 @ 3:11AM
My son found this stuffed skeleton as tall as he was in a store on sale after Holloween when he was about 4, sobbed until he got me to buy it and he played football and wrestling with the poor thing till it's head dropped off. They were best friends and I would occasionally catch him "tackling" it right into middle school. He's eighteen now on varsity football team and I think he took his " doll" into boy land. Never bought toy guns.....he used sticks. I think it's hardwired.
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mckenna 8-24-2008 @ 3:28PM
I've always thought it's a bit of both. My first son was immediately intrigued with anything that moved (trains in particular), and was going to play ball with or without our help. He would play with dolls, but in a grab-them-by-the-hair kinda way. My younger son is only 5 month, so it remains to be seen. My mom always wanted me to play with dolls and did everything in her power to get me interested, but I never was (much to her chagrin). Barbie seemed to have a much more interesting thing going on than pretend babies that wet their pants and cried at you. As a kid, I wasn't much into caretaking. As an adult, I'm definitely more into it (clearly: I have 2 kids), but only because they're my own. My husband will tell you he doesn't get enough "caretaking" from me for his taste.
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Uly 8-24-2008 @ 6:40PM
I've spent a lot of time watching young kids, and a lot of time watching their parents.
Here's what I see:
Young children flock to cooking toys, probably because that's what Mom and Dad do.
They also flock to toy trucks and cars, no doubt for the same reason.
Older young children love violent play, I can't tell you how many times my older niece said she "shot" me or "blew me up".
They also love playing with children younger than they are and bossing them around, usually by pretending to be the parent or older sibling.
Parents universally see what they expect to see, regardless of whether or not that's what's going on. I've heard people comment that their son "wouldn't know what to do with toy pots and pans" at the *same time* that their son is playing with said pots and pans appropriately. I've heard parents comment that my younger niece "must be a real girly girl" *even as she's crawling on the floor with a truck going vroom vroom*. (I've also heard my younger niece scream in my ear TRUCK TRUCK every time she saw a truck. Sheesh.) I've seen people refuse to let their boys play dress-up because the boys only want to wear the sparkly clothes. And I've seen them pushing sparkly dresses onto girls who are asking aloud for the firefighter jacket instead.
And every time, I remember the study that showed that grown-ups, when presented with pink-dressed and blue-dressed babies, even if they claimed to treat children just the same - those same grown-ups universally played with the pink children differently from the blue children. More words for the "girls", more action for the "boys".
Even if there is any innate difference it's so covered in cultural stuff that we'll never find it.
(And even if we did, would it matter? You say "boys walk sooner than girls" and that "girls talk sooner than boys", but you could just as easily say "Men are taller than women" and be just as correct, even though we can all think of dozens of short men and dozens of tall women. If you have 50 men and 50 women, and want to divide them up so the men are on the left side of the room, and you do it by height, you *know* you're gonna fail.)
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