Girl toys, boy toys, and parenting: The science of toy preferences

© 2009 – 2022 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved

Yes, at that place are "daughter toys" and "boy toys."

Only are gender-typical toys merely a thing of cultural grooming?

Parents with sons and daughters often meet differences in the mode their kids play. And research confirms it:

Boys ordinarily spend more time in "rough and tumble" play.

Are boys more physical considering we encourage them? Probably. In most cultures, the pattern is the same: People are more likely to railroad train boys to exist tough, strong, aggressive, and competitive (Low 1989).

Just that doesn't mean behavior is entirely determined past social factors. Child's play is too influenced by prenatal evolution. In a study of fetal testosterone, researchers measured hormone levels in the amniotic fluid of pregnant women. Then they tracked the children for several years after nativity.

The results? Testosterone levels were higher in male fetuses, of grade. But female fetuses were exposed to some testosterone, too. And fetal testosterone was linked with rough-and-tumble play. The higher the testosterone levels, the more probable the child was to showroom "male-typical" behaviors (Auyeung et al 2009).

These findings are consistent with experiments on nonhuman animals. If you artificially boost male person hormone levels in developing females, they engage in more male person-typical play. If you lot artificiallyreduce male person hormone levels in males, they engage in less male-typical play (Hines 2006).

So are preferences for "girl toys" and "boy toys" biologically adamant?

It's more complicated than that. Maybe the male person preference for rough-and-tumble play can explain the way that kids play with their toys. Merely that doesn't brand the toys themselves intrinsically male or female.

Give a girl some plastic dinosaurs, and she might do several things–deed out a drama, take the dinosaurs "foraging," or treat the toys as pets. A male child might be more than likely to stage dinosaur battles. Perhaps it'due south not the toys that ascertain male-typical play, but what boys practise with their toys.

And there is some other interesting point. In studies that have tested the toy preferences of Western children, boys and girls weren't equally attracted to gender-typical toys. Whereas most boys had strong preferences for gender-typical toys, girls did not.

Thus, whether or not boys are predisposed to prefer "boy toys," there is no reason to call back that girls are predisposed toreject toys that are stereotypically male.

Here's an example.

Most young boys desire "male" toys…fifty-fifty if the parents aren't pushing them

In a study of American preschoolers (ages 2 to v), Clyde Robinson and James Morris asked parents what their children had gotten for Christmas. Some gifts had been requested by the kids themselves. Other gifts were chosen solely by the parents.

Equally information technology turns out, the toys thekids requested for themselveswere more than likely to be gender-stereotyped (east.1000., boys asked for "masculine" toys). When parents chose the toys, they tended to requite gender-neutral gifts, like fine art supplies, musical instruments, and educational toys (Robinson and Morris 1986).

Not terribly surprising, right? But here's the kicker. In the Robinson and Morris study,information technology was mostly the boys who were requesting gender-stereotyped toys.

At every age, near 75% of their requests were for "boy toys." But girls didn't show a similar preference for gender-stereotyped toys until they were 5 years erstwhile.

This asymmetry has been documented in many studies (Berenbaum and Hines 1992; Carter and Levy 1988; Eisenberg and Wolchik 1985; Sutton-Smith and Rosenberg 1963. Boys show stiff preferences for stereotypically male toys.Girlsdon't show strong preferences for stereotypically female toys.The only exception I've found is a study that examined the toy preferences in infants (Alexander and Saenz 2012).

Why the difference? Some researchers take suggested that boys show a stronger sexual activity bias than girls do because boys become more criticism for crossing the toy gender line. Kids of both sexes are encouraged to play with "gender-typical" toys. Only boys may be more strongly stigmatized for playing in gender atypical means (Kane 2006).

That sounds right to me. Surely culture and social pressures have a huge impact on what children think is an acceptable toy. But I also wonder if hormones–and the brain differences caused past hormones–play a role in toy preferences.

That idea is consistent with a contempo study of testosterone (T) levels in toddlers. Researchers in Republic of finland tracked T levels in 48 newborns for 6 months, and and then tested the children's toy preferences when they were fourteen months old. Girls were more likely to play with toy trains if they had exhibited higher T levels as infants. Boys with lower T levels were more likely to play with dolls (Lamminmäki et al 2012).

Intriguing? Certainly. Simply the most fascinating evidence may come up from studies of nonhuman primates.

Monkeys aren't exposed to cultural messages about what toys they should play with. And yet they bear witness sexual activity-biased patterns. In one experiment, Janice Hassett and her colleagues presented male and female rhesus monkeys with a choice of toys–wheeled vehicles vs. costly toys. The male person monkeys showed a strong and consequent preference for the wheeled toys. The female monkeys showed no strong preference either mode (Hassett et al 2008).

In some other experiment on vervet monkeys, Gerianne Alexander and Melissa Hines presented monkeys with a series of different toys. The researchers didn't test toy preferences straight, because monkeys merely saw one toy at a time. Merely Alexander and Hines did find that females were more likely to selection up dolls than were males. And the male monkeys were more than probable than females to handle toy cars (Alexander and Hines 2002).

Are these experiments the last discussion on sex-biased toy preferences? Of course not. But they exercise suggest that sex-based preferences can arise in the absenteeism of human cultural influences. It seems unlikely that social pressures tin can explain why male monkeys prefer toys with wheels.

Of class, this begs the question. What is intrinsically male about a toy truck–something that wasn't even invented until the 20th century?

We're a long style from answering that rather imponderable question. But there are some hints.

For example, in that location is some evidence that males tend to adopt looking at mechanical motility rather than biological motion. In i experiment, researchers presented 12-calendar month old babies with videos of cars and faces. Male babies looked longer at images of moving cars. Girl babies looked longer at videos of moving faces (Lutchmaya and Businesswoman-Cohen 2002).

And, as noted by Christina Williams and Kristen Pleil–who conducted their own toy experiments–toy trucks have interesting apertures to investigate, and may lend themselves to certain kinds of mechanical exploration that simply don't apply to most soft toys or dolls (Williams and Pleil 2009).

So maybe toy trucks–which exhibit internal motion and take intriguing surfaces to explore–are more appealing to individuals interested in mechanically-oriented play (Williams and Pleil 2009).

Toys that become noticed

Another idea that occurs to me is that toy vehicles are relatively noisy, disruptive toys. Push a doll, and it doesn't travel far, nor does it make noise. By contrast, y'all can really raise a ruckus–and become attention–with a toy truck.

The "ruckus" cistron may be relevant considering loud noises and commotion are key ingredients in many nonhuman primate authorisation displays. Perhaps the near famous case was Mike, a smart chimpanzee who rose to power in Gombe National Park by inventing new, intimidating dominance displays. Mike took onetime gasoline cans (borrowed from Jane Goodall's camp) and made tremendous commotion—throwing, slapping, and rolling the cans along the ground.

Perhaps, and so, natural selection has favored males who seek out and tinker with objects that tin can make a ruckus. But whatsoever explains the male person preference for mechanical play, nosotros should consider: Mechanical play hones spatial skills, and spatial skills are key for success in a variety of fields, including art, architecture, engineering, and the physical sciences.

And while it's probable that doll play has its own benefits, highly-sexualized dolls may teach girls to value themselves primarily for their concrete appearance – not a promising recipe for intellectual development.

Then in that location are adept reasons to counter the cultural pressures that push kids into sexual activity-stereotyped play. To read more about the links between play and spatial skills, see my article, opens in a new window"Spatial intelligence in children: Why training matters." You can also check out my opens in a new windowevidence-based activities for improving spatial skills in kids.

For more information about the harmful effects of sexualizing childhood, see my article, opens in a new window"The sexualization of girls: Is the pop civilization harming our kids?"

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References: Girl toys, boy toys, and parenting

Alexander 1000 and Hines M. 2002. Sexual practice differences in response to children's toys in nonhuman primates (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus) Evolution and Human Behavior 23(vi): 467-479.

Alexander GM and Saenz J. 2012. Early on androgens, activity levels and toy choices of children in the second yr of life. Horm Behav. 2022 Sep;62(4):500-4

Auyeaung B, Businesswoman-Cohen S, Ashwin East, Knickmeyer R, et al. 2009. Fetal testosterone predicts sexually differentiated childhood behavior in girls and boys. Psychological Science twenty(2): 144-148.

Berenbaum SA and Hines Chiliad. 1992. Early androgens are related to childhood sex-typed toy preferences. Psychological Science 3:203-206.

Carter DB and Levy GD. 1988. Cerebral aspects of early on sexual activity-function development: the influence of gender schemas on preschoolers' memories and preferences for sexual activity-typed toys and activities. Child Development 59: 782-792.

Eisenberg North aqnd Wolchik SA. 1985. Parental socialization of immature childrens' play: A brusque-term longitudinal report. Child Development 56: 1506-1513.

Hines M. 2006. Prenatal testosterone and gender-related behavior. European Journal of Endocrinology 115: S115-S121.

Lamminmäki A, Hines Grand, Kuiri-Hänninen T, Kilpeläinen Fifty, Dunkel L, and Sankilampi U. 2012. Testosterone measured in infancy predicts subsequent sex-typed behavior in boys and in girls. Horm Behav. 61(4):611-six

Low B. 1989. Cross-cultural patterns in the training of children: An evolutionary perspective. Journal of Comparative Psychology. 103(4): 311-319.

Lutchmaya S and Baron-Cohen South. 2002. Human being sexual activity differences in social and non-social looking preferences, at 12 months of historic period. Infant Behavior and Evolution 25(3): 319-325

Kane EW. No fashion my boys are going to be like that! Gender and Society. 2006;twenty:149–176.

Robinson CC and Morris JT. 1986. The gender-stereotyped nature of christmas toys received by 36-, 48-, and threescore-calendar month-old children: A comparison between nonrequested vs requested toys. Sex activity Roles 15: 21-32.

Sutton-Smith B and Rosenberg BG. 1963. Development of sex differences in play choices during preadolescence. Child Evolution 34: 199-126.

Williams CL and Pleil KE. 2008. Toy story: Why exercise monkey and human being males adopt trucks? Comment on "Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences parallel those of children by Hassett, Siebert and Wallen." Horm Behav 54(iii): 335-358.

Content of "Male child toys, girl toys and parenting" last modified eleven/12

image of Hulk toy by Darren Hester

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Source: https://parentingscience.com/girl-toys-and-parenting/

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