How Much Does Gender Count When Selecting Toys?

¶ … gender is determined through social interaction, while sex is biological. Gender-specific behaviors are usually instilled in children by their families, by their communities, and the media, according to Professor Janet Moyles (Moyles, 2012). Moyles explains that typically children accept gender stereotypes, they "identify with the stereotypical role of the gender," and sometimes children (especially boys) "punish others who exhibit cross-gender behaviors and traits" (Moyles, 65). This paper delves into the issue of gender-based reasoning and references peer-reviewed research articles that investigate gender-related attraction to toys.

Girls that have congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) who had high levels of androgen when they were in the womb indicated "increased play with boys' toys" and less play with girls' toys (Berenbaum, et al., 1992). Writing in the journal Psychological Science, the authors concluded that hormones (androgens) play a role in which toys girls play with and which toys boys play with. In other words, when females have hormone exposure in their prenatal experience that exposure ends up having a "masculinizing effect" on gender-typed toy preferences (Berenbaum, 203).

Interesting research in the peer-reviewed journal Child Study Journal delved into the choices made by preschool children when it comes to book themes and toy choices. The authors studied thirty-six boys and thirty-six girls (ages two through four years of age) and observed that, in accordance with conventional wisdom, boys are more aggressive than girls in the U.S., Switzerland, Finland, Ethiopia, Brazil and elsewhere.

That is not an original or unique finding, but what was interesting in this research is that boys tend to limit themselves "more than girls to gender-specific toy choices" (Collins-Standley, 1996). Girls, on the other hand, were "less bound by gender prescriptions" and more often than boys they "crossed gender lines in their choices of toys" (Collins-Standley, 2). Research conducted by Andree Pomerleau and colleagues indicates that even when a child is only 1-year-old, they are exhibiting gender-related tendencies. In this peer-reviewed article an investigation was conducted involving sixty-five-month-old girls and boys.

When various toys were placed close enough to be touched and observed, there were significant differences in their responses that contribute well to this paper's theme.

THREE: Your Observational Research Question When brought into an environment with both boys and girls toys, will more girls than boys choose their gender role toys, or will boys choose gender toys more than girls do? FOUR: Scientific Investigation One question that has been raised is at what age to boys and girls begin to show their gender preferences in dolls? And how do very young girls respond to different toys than they are accustomed to as opposed to how very young boys react to toys they haven't been familiar with? This research should provide this paper with some answers insofar as which toys girls will select and which boys will select.

In the Pomerleau research, the authors suggest that even at the age of 1 year, children begin to show a preference for certain toys. The design in The Journal of Genetic Psychology placed 60-five-month-old boys and girls in a laboratory setting; the children were seated at a table, on the lap of an assistant (five months of age is very young for a baby).

Each toy that was used (some familiar, some unfamiliar) was placed on the table in front of the baby for two minutes after the child first touched the toy. The scientists measured the frequency and the duration of each child's fixation on the toy in front of the child. There were eight categories of handling behaviors observed and recorded, and five categories of lateralization.

What was different with the girls' behavior in this research was that girls "…spent more time than boys did in simultaneous hand contact with and visual fixation on their own familiar toy" (Pomerleau, 47). Boys, on the other hand, made more frequent physical contact with the familiar toy but did not visually fixate on the toy as the girls did. Girls were more reluctant than boys to touch any unfamiliar object that had been placed at arms' length on the table in front of them.

Boys were given to touching, pinching, turning and hitting. In one of the experiments (which involved seven trials), parents were invited to be in the room during the experiments. They stayed "at some distance" from the infant. Four toys were placed consecutively on the table 11 centimeters from the baby. Two of the toys were an abstract wooden blue figure, and a Fisher-Price colored train; one was a toy familiar to each infant; another was small, orange, plastic "bird-like figure" (Pomerleau, 50).

Girls spent a much higher percentage of their time in "…simultaneous contact-fixation" with toys that were familiar (56.09%) than the boys did (36.65%) (Pomerleau, 53). To the infant boys, the rate of "contact-only responses" with a familiar toy was quite a big higher than contact responses for girls. The conclusion to this scientifically significant study showed that five-month-old infants show a variety of behaviors that are not gender-related.

However, boys were much less attentive to the familiar object placed in front of them and these behaviors might be "precursors" of behaviors that boys and girls will exhibit later in life. Brief Observational Research Proposal If the same 60.