The first question typically asked of parents enrolling their child in a crèche or nursery school is: boy or girl? Does it really matter? It certainly does at first glance when you watch the kids play.
Girls, not uncommonly attired in pink sequin dresses, are often huddled together playing "family" or jumping around, dancing and chattering with each other. Boys, on the other hand, tend to busy themselves with building blocks or race around the yard on balance bikes.
How much of that is innate, and how much acquired via societal norms? In science, this is known as the nature versus nurture debate.
"Gender differences in toy choice exist and appear to be the product of both innate and social forces," concluded a 2017 British meta-analysis of 16 observational studies - from various years - of the free selection of toys by boys and girls aged 1-8 years.
Writing in the journal Infant and Child Development, the researchers said they found that boys played with male-typed toys, such as vehicles, more than girls did, and girls played with female-typed toys, such as dolls, more than did boys. Hormonal differences may play a role, they said.
They also found that time playing with male-typed toys increased as boys got older, but the same pattern wasn't seen in girls. Moreover, the gender difference in toy selection was more pronounced in earlier studies than in later ones, which points to possible "environmental influences."
The colour pink for girls and blue for boys (it was once the other way around) is held to be a purely social construct. Whether children have innate, sex-specific preferences for certain toys is hard to say though, according to journalist and blogger Almut Schnerring, co-author of a book whose German title translates as "The Pink-Blue Trap: For a Childhood Without Gender Stereotypes."
"Environmental influences always exist - starting on day one," says Schnerring. This includes not only the colour and patterns of the child's room, clothing and even the dummy they're given to suck on. Studies have shown, she points out, that expectant parents who know the sex of the foetus behave differently depending on which sex it is, and speak more to girls in the womb, for instance.
In experiments, she adds, people have been shown to play - often unconsciously - with someone else's baby differently depending on whether they think it's a boy or a girl. So if one-year-olds show a preference for certain toys, cultural influences can be the reason, she says: "Biology and socializaion can't be examined separately."
In the view of developmental psychologist Doris Bischof-Köhler, the sexes behave differently by nature. There are evolutionary psychological reasons that boys like to play rough games as early as nursery school age, she says.
Primatologist Frans de Waal, recently deceased, cited studies showing that when monkeys are given human toys, the females tend to pick up the dolls, and the males the trucks. "But associating a cooking pan in a monkey enclosure with 'female' is abstruse," says Schnerring, referring to similar studies of monkeys' preferences for gender-typed human toys.
Exactly which toys are boy-related, girl-related or neutral? A 2020 British meta-analysis of 75 toy-preference studies found there wasn't always agreement on this.
The interplay of biological/genetic predispositions and environmental factors is undisputed though. The latter can reinforce the former, for example when children get only toys associated with their sex, when parents react more positively to play associated with a child's sex or children watch peers of their own sex at play.
Environmental influences can even affect the expression of genes, as the field of epigenetics has shown.
Gender differences often increase in the first years of life largely due to gender-based marketing, according to Schnerring. Be it Kinder surprise eggs, books, shampoo or slippers, just about all children's products these days come in two versions: boy's or girl's, pirate or princess.
"Never has a generation been so bombarded with gender-binarism messaging as the present one," Schnerring says, noting that while toy soldiers, dolls, etc. were gender-typed in earlier years too, boy/girl labelling has been amplified by Instagram, prominent poster advertising at bus stops and TV programming for kids.
"A lot of kids don't want this divided pink-blue world at first, but their voices aren't heard," remarks Schnerring.
Media scholars Maya Götz and Birgit Irrgang, from the Germany-based Institute for Media Research and Media Education (JFF), agree that gender-based markerting has increased in recent years.
Although the relative influence of nature and nurture on girls' and boys' different play behaviour can't be conclusively determined, it's clear that not all children identify with gender stereotypes. What's more, gender stereotypes can have unwanted effects on their later lives and society in general.
When mostly boys get building blocks and toy vehicles to play with in nursery school, it's no wonder that at adolescence, special programmes are needed to arouse girls' interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). And constantly hearing that girls aren't as good at STEM subjects as boys can cause them - as a result of the "stereotype threat" phenomenon - to "live down" to the negative expectations.
Schnerring says she wishes adults would gender-type less when giving toys to children. "It's important to offer them a variety of toys and go against gender stereotypes now and then. They'd also do well to have an open ear, she says: "A child who wants the pink ball today may want the yellow bike tomorrow."
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