Home » forums » Ask a Dad » Parenting

Toys for girls and boys

daddyfever
Posts: 45
 Joined: 2010-02-16
 Dad Points: 105

There was a show on TV here last night looking at the whole nature vs. nurture debate - here in Norway, the general academic opinion is that biology plays no role in who we are and the choices we make.  The host of this show was interested in looking into the scientific basis for this claim and found that many researchers from around the world have actually found the opposite - that boys and girls are different to begin with.  Of course the child's environment can encourage or repress certain traits and behaviours, but you can't ignore the fact that there is an inherent difference.

A sour pill to swallow for the hard-liners, I'm sure - a couple of the Norwegian researchers they interviewed called the research that indicates a difference between boys and girls, "weak research" and this one researcher at Cambridge in England was studying testosterone levels in foetuses and how that relates to certain behaviours and preferences in the children; among other things, he found that, when a one-day old baby is presented with an image of a mechanical object and a human face, female babies will always look at the face longer and male babies will always look at the mechanical object longer and that babies that had higher levels of testosterone in the womb were slower with speech acquisition and had a harder time with empathy as they got older (this study has been going on for 8 years and is still on-going -- not such weak research if you ask me...).  Of course there are some girls who are more "boyish" and some boys who are more "girlish", but (apparently) the tendency is clear...

So, have any of you guys noticed any obvious preferences in your kids?  Do/did they seem to like girl/boy things naturally?

We have tried not to give my son too many "boy" things, but it is certainly impossible to deny his interest in cars.  At the same time, he is more verbal and extroverted than many other boys his age and today at the local drop in centre we visit he was walking around with a pink purse full of cars for most of the morning :-)


‹ Housework with kids Cooking with a 2 year old ›

Submitted by daddyfever on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 3:58pm.

BritDad
Posts: 33
 Joined: 2006-11-21
 Dad Points: 57
Friend of Dorothy

My four year old lad loves pink too. His favourite character in Scooby Doo is Daphne (closely followed by Velma), his favourite movie is Wizard of Oz and he's also quite fond of Mama Mia. My wife finds it deeply worrying, but then I’m the one wrestling with him on the rug and I know exactly how much testosterone he’s got – he’s merciless. He also got a wooden castle for his birthday complete with plastic knight figures and monsters and, predictably, he likes the princess figure the most. But the princess still smashes the plastic dinosaur over the head, yelling ‘kill the dinosaur, KILL HIM!’

Then again, some of his (male) friends at daycare won’t touch anything pink and only want to play with diggers. Maybe they’ve been conditioned (‘put that down, pink’s for girls’, etc) or maybe some lads are just naturally that way. Unless you grow them in a plastic box, it’s hard to know. My take on it is that when you take away the social labels we put on things (dolls are for girls, cars for boys) actually pink is just a brighter colour, princesses look more interesting than drab soldiers and in children’s fiction, it’s actually quite hard to find a positive male role model who doesn’t settle things with kung fu.

It would certainly be interesting to come back to this question in twenty years when the generation WE raised comes of age – does being raised exclusively by a man make a difference to how your presonality develops?


Thu, 03/04/2010 - 5:55am

ScottyG
ScottyG's picture
Posts: 13
 Joined: 2010-02-10
 Dad Points: 17
Some things do seem

Some things do seem hard-wired.  I have a friend who's a serious hippie mama.  Raised her son to wear skirts if he wanted to, play with dolls or whatever, as long as he wants it, he gets to use it.  Around when he turned one, he discovered trucks, and pretty much only plays with vehicles and construction equipment these days.  TRUCKS are like his be-all, end-all.  He knows very few words for, say, food... but can tell the difference between a dump truck and a backhoe.

My daughter, so far, doesn't seem quite so gender-obvious.  She does like kitties, fake food to "cook" with, and her tea set.  But also, she likes bugs and dinosaurs.  We'll see!


Thu, 03/04/2010 - 11:25pm

daddyfever
Posts: 45
 Joined: 2010-02-16
 Dad Points: 105
Kung fu princess

The image of the dinosaur-killing princess triggered a funny memory of my youngest brother and his "My Buddy" doll.  He carried that doll everywhere and was very protective of it but, if you teased him too much, My Buddy turned into a nasty weapon!  You would be surprised how hard his plastic head really was - and how much it can hurt when wielded by an angry 3 year old!


Sat, 03/06/2010 - 1:34am

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.