Children show gender preferences from 9 months
CHILDREN as young as 9 months prefer to play with toys specific to their own gender – boys with cars or balls and girls with dolls or cooking pots, says a new study.
The study,in the journal Infant and Child Development, showed that in a familiar nursery environment, significant sex differences were evident at an earlier age than gendered identity is usually demonstrated.
“We found that, in general, boys played with male-typed toys more than female-typed toys and girls played with female-typed toys more than male-typed toys,” said Brenda Todd, senior lecturer in psychology at City University, London.
To investigate the gender preferences seen with toys, the researchers observed the toy preferences of boys and girls engaged in independent play in nurseries in Britain, without the presence of a parent.
The toys used were a doll, a pink teddy bear and a cooking pot for girls, and for boys, a car, a blue teddy, a digger and a ball.
The 101 boys and girls fell into three age groups: nine to 17 months, when infants can first demonstrate toy preferences in independent play; 18 to 23 months, when critical advances in gender knowledge occur; and 24 to 32 months, when knowledge becomes further established.
Stereotypical toy preferences were found for boys and girls in each of the age groups, demonstrating that sex differences in toy preference appear early.
Both boys and girls showed a trend for an increasing preference with age for toys stereotyped for boys.
“Our results show that there are significant sex differences across all three age groups. The finding for children in the youngest group – 9 to 17 months, when infants are able to crawl or walk and therefore make independent selections – was particularly interesting. The ball was a favourite choice for the youngest boys and the youngest girls favoured the cooking pot,” Todd noted.
“Sex differences in play and toy choice are of interest in relation to child care, educational practice and developmental theory,” she said. – IANS