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By: Stephen Johnson

Published: Apr 9, 2021

A recent meta-analysis overviewed 75 studies on children’s gender-related toy preferences.

The results found that “gender-related toy preferences may be considered a well-established finding.”

It’s a controversial topic: Some people argue that these preferences stem from social pressure, while others say they’re at least partly rooted in biology.

There’s more gender equality in Western societies today than in the past. Inequalities still exist, of course, but research has consistently shown an uptrend in women joining and rising within the workforce, obtaining degrees, and earning more money. The social expectations of men and women also seemed to have changed; this is harder to measure empirically, but it seems safe to say that our ideas about gender roles are more fluid today than they were, in say, the 1950s.

So, have these changes affected a crucial part of children’s development: play? More specifically, as gender roles have become more fluid, have children’s preferences toward gender-typed toys become more fluid, too?

The short answer seems to be no. For decades, studies have shown that boys and girls generally prefer playing with toys typically associated with their biological sex: toy trucks for boys and dolls for girls, to give a rough example.

These results have remained remarkably stable over the past 50 years, according to a 2020 meta-analysis of research on gender differences in toy preferences. Published in Archives of Sexual Behavior and titled “The Magnitude of Children’s Gender‐Related Toy Interests Has Remained Stable Over 50 Years of Research,” the analysis examined 75 previous studies, 113 effect sizes, and a range of toy preference measurements.

The authors, Jac T. M. Davis and Melissa Hines, found “a broad consistency of results across the large body of research on children’s gender-related toy preferences: children showed large and reliable preferences for toys that were related to their own gender. Thus, according to our review, gender-related toy preferences may be considered a well-established finding.”

A letter to the editor in the same journal sought to challenge these findings in a separate analysis, which concluded that children actually spend less time playing with gender-typical toys these days.

The authors of that analysis speculated that the reason for this decline “might reflect social pressures in recent times for children to be less gender-typical in their behavior.” In other words, the decline stems from parents wanting to be more in line with progressive ideas about gender fluidity.

However, Davis and Hines disagreed, proposing that the supposed decline appeared in the analysis only because of the specific methodology employed by the researchers. What’s more, they noted that toy advertisers have been using more gender stereotypes to boost sales in recent decades—a finding that potentially complicates the claim that social pressures are causing kids to spend less time playing with gender-typical toys.

Davis and Hines concluded:

“It may be tempting to think that social changes over time might be reducing children’s play with gender-related toys, given arguments that play with a broader set of toys would be beneficial for both boys and girls. Unfortunately, however, broad change in the social roles of men and women do not seem to have influenced children’s toy choices, perhaps because they have been counteracted by stronger marketing of different toys to girls and boys over recent time. If society wants girls and boys to play with the full range of toys, more targeted action is probably required.”

Why are we so concerned about which toys kids play with?

But does society really want kids to play with less gender-typical toys? Some research suggests the answer is yes. A 2017 survey from Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans considered it a “somewhat or very good thing” to steer kids toward toys and activities traditionally associated with the opposite gender (though respondents were less enthusiastic about doing so for boys than girls).

Encouraging kids to play with a wider range of toys could yield benefits. For example, a 2020 study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that when both boys and girls play with dolls, they experience heightened activation within brain regions associated with empathy and perspective-taking.

But no matter what society wants, it’s worth noting that there seem to be some biological drivers behind children’s preferences for gender-typical toys.

For example, studies have shown that babies tend to prefer toys oriented to their own gender, a finding that suggests their preference is innate because they’re in the pre-socialization stage of development. Supporting that argument are studies showing that baby monkeys also display gender-typical toy preferences.

Still, it’s easy to see how social pressures might affect kids’ toy preferences as they grow up. So, the question of why kids prefer the toys that they do likely boils down to a familiar answer: a tangled mix of environmental and biological factors.

“It would be extreme to claim zero influence of biology on gender differences in toy choices, and the research community is still divided on how important biology and social factors are,” Davis told Big Think.

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Abstract

Sex differences in children's toy preferences are thought by many to arise from gender socialization. However, evidence from patients with endocrine disorders suggests that biological factors during early development (e.g., levels of androgens) are influential. In this study, we found that vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus) show sex differences in toy preferences similar to those documented previously in children. The percent of contact time with toys typically preferred by boys (a car and a ball) was greater in male vervets (n=33) than in female vervets (n=30) (P<.05), whereas the percent of contact time with toys typically preferred by girls (a doll and a pot) was greater in female vervets than in male vervets (P<.01). In contrast, contact time with toys preferred equally by boys and girls (a picture book and a stuffed dog) was comparable in male and female vervets. The results suggest that sexually differentiated object preferences arose early in human evolution, prior to the emergence of a distinct hominid lineage. This implies that sexually dimorphic preferences for features (e.g., color, shape, movement) may have evolved from differential selection pressures based on the different behavioral roles of males and females, and that evolved object feature preferences may contribute to present day sexually dimorphic toy preferences in children.

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Abstract

Socialization processes, parents, or peers encouraging play with gender specific toys are thought to be the primary force shaping sex differences in toy preference. A contrast in view is that toy preferences reflect biologically determined preferences for specific activities facilitated by specific toys. Sex differences in juvenile activities, such as rough and tumble play, peer preferences, and infant interest, share similarities in humans and monkeys. Thus if activity preferences shape toy preferences, male and female monkeys may show toy preferences similar to those seen in boys and girls. We compared the interactions of 34 rhesus monkeys, living within a 135 monkey troop, with human wheeled toys and plush toys. Male monkeys, like boys, showed consistent and strong preferences for wheeled toys, while female monkeys, like girls, showed greater variability in preferences. Thus, the magnitude of preference for wheeled over plush toys differed significantly between males and females. The similarities to human findings demonstrate that such preferences can develop without explicit gendered socialization. We offer the hypothesis that toy preferences reflect hormonally influenced behavioral and cognitive biases which are sculpted by social processes into the sex differences seen in monkeys and humans.

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Parents of young children will tell you that boys like different toys than girls; they are intrigued by Bob the Builder, Transformers of all kinds, trucks, police cars, front loaders, bikes, skate boards, and wagons. Girls too like bikes, cars and Legos, but also play with stuffed animals and dolls, toys that boys find less appealing for active play. Is this difference in toy preference due exclusively to socialization by parents, other children, and the media, or are there basic perception/action differences between males and females that make some toys a better “fit” for or more attractive to one sex than another? In this issue, Hassett et al. (2008) provide evidence that male and female rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) of all ages and ranks show preferences for wheeled and plush toys that resemble the preferences shown by human children in many studies of toy choice. This cross-species demonstration of male–female differences in toy choice strongly supports and extends prior work with humans (e.g., Berenbaum and Hines, 1992; Campbell et al., 2000; Pasterski et al., 2005; Serbin et al., 2001) and vervet monkeys (Alexander and Hines, 2002) showing that sexually dimorphic toy preferences reflect basic neurobiological differences between males and females and are not caused solely by socialization, as has been suggested by cognitive-social theories of gender role behavior (Caldera et al., 1989; Carter and Levy, 1988; Pomerleau et al., 1990; Roopnarine, 1986).

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Abstract

Sex differences in children's toy play are robust and similar across cultures [1,2]. They include girls tending to play more with dolls and boys more with wheeled toys and pretend weaponry. This pattern is explained by socialization by elders and peers, male rejection of opposite-sex behavior and innate sex differences in activity preferences that are facilitated by specific toys [1]. Evidence for biological factors is controversial but mounting. For instance, girls who have been exposed to high fetal androgen levels are known to make relatively masculine toy choices [3]. Also, when presented with sex-stereotyped human toys, captive female monkeys play more with typically feminine toys, whereas male monkeys play more with masculine toys [1]. In human and nonhuman primates, juvenile females demonstrate a greater interest in infants, and males in rough-and-tumble play. This sex difference in activity preferences parallels adult behavior and may contribute to differences in toy play [1]. Here, we present the first evidence of sex differences in use of play objects in a wild primate, in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). We find that juveniles tend to carry sticks in a manner suggestive of rudimentary doll play and, as in children and captive monkeys, this behavior is more common in females than in males.

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So, it turns out boys and girls are real and different, not merely "social constructs." Shocking, I know.

This is an imaginary "problem."

Our primate relatives have no plausible mechanism for social constructivism, yet exhibit the same sex-based tendencies, behaviors and preferences.

The people who believe that children are different due to social engineering believe it because they want to socially engineer children. They think it's all brainwashing, and they want to be the ones doing the brainwashing. Because they're also covert evolution-deniers.

#PianoDay takes place on the 88th day of the year in keeping with the instrument’s number of keys. Equal parts string and percussion, the energy and joy of the #piano enlivens the DeKalb Avenue (B,D,Q,R) Station through Stephen Johnson’s “Dekalb Improvisation” (2005), a vibrant collage of color, shape and nods to Downtown Brooklyn history, such as the Chandler Piano Warehouse, a prominent neighborhood establishment in the first half of the twentieth century.

HIGH GROUND 2020 | dir. Stephen Johnson 

New from Notting Hill Editions and BBC music broadcaster, Stephen Johnson, How Shostakovich Changed My Mind.

... follow the white rabbit ...

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