Posted on 04/16/2010 10:46:40 AM PDT by ilovesarah2012
THURSDAY, April 15 (HealthDay News) -- Parents may want their girls to grow up to be astronauts and their boys to one day do their fair share of child care and housework duties, but a new study suggests certain stereotypical gender preferences take root even before most kids can crawl.
When presented with seven different toys, boys as young as 9 months old went for the car, digger and soccer ball, while ignoring the teddy bears, doll and cooking set.
And the girls? You guessed it. At the same age, they were most interested in the doll, teddy bear and miniature pot, spoon and plastic vegetables.
"The boys always preferred the toys that go or move, and the girls preferred toys that promote nurturing and facial features," said study author Sara Amalie O'Toole Thommessen, an undergraduate at City University in London.
So does this mean that boys and girls have an innate preference for certain types of objects? Or does socialization -- that is, the influence of parents and the larger culture -- impact children's choice of toys very early in life?
It's too soon to rule either out, said Walter Gilliam, director of the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
evil heteronormalists!
Before I had children (back in my young liberal days) I really believe boys and girls were pretty much the same but were just raised differently. After I had my own, I found out the truth. LOL
Place those 9-month olds into nongender-normative rich learning environments right now!
“It’s too soon to rule either out”
That statement won’t be enough to get him out of hot water for allowing this study in the first place. Better that he should have advocated diversity training for newborns.
I have 2 boys and 2 girls. Right now the boys are down the hall engaging in a “military battle”. The girls are upstairs in pretty dresses pretending to be “mommies” going to church. Just try and tell me there’s no innate differences.
Gotta have the confounding anecdote here: My daughter insists she wants to be an astronaut, and prefers her astronaut figures to her My Little Ponies (who she apparently has go on space missions too). But then, her favorite videos are the hyper-realistic BBC “Walking With” series, particularly “Walking with Monsters”, about the pre-dinosaur eras. She also loves to play with plastic dinosaurs (and they don’t have tea parties; they eat each other), and her favorite “story book” is a science book on exoplanets. She thought for a while that she wanted to give up on being an astronaut because she liked drawing and painting, and thought that as an astronaut she couldn’t do those things, until I showed her all the paintings that past astronauts have done of their missions.
You have no idea how proud I am of her.
looks like a good case for the need of gene therapy! We can’t have boys acting like boys and girls acting like girls! Think of the confusion that will cause! Why the next thing you know goys will want to date girls and girls will want to date boys and we all know where that leads to! HETEROSEXISM! ;-)
This thread needs some pictures of nine-month olds babies. :)
A study from 2001 found even 1-day-old boys spent longer looking at moving, mechanical options than 1-day-old girls, who spent more time looking at faces.
What is it about Academia that requires them to re-learn this lesson every 10 years?
Parents, if they don't know to start out with, quickly learn...BOYS AND GIRLS ARE DIFFERENT!!
Anyone who has two or more kids of opposite gender already knows that this is true (most of the time). I have a 2-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl, and the differences are stark from the time the kids are able to choose what to play with and how to play.
SnakeDoc
My boys liked to play with the doll, teddy bear and cooking toys. They’d play the bear was chasing the doll and then they’d smack the bear with the pot, and stab it with the spoon. Of course, after that they’d stop for a nice snack of fresh veggies.
I hope she succeeds. She’d better learn Russian, though..............
Natural tendencies MUST be stopped! /s
When do we get the crisp lecture about the researchers not having given them interior decorating and hairdressing toys so the gay infants could feel comfortable?
those rightwing haters need to get their minds right.
I saw this for myself. Back in the days when I was a hippie, I was determined to raise my two daughters and one son in a gender normed world. Funny, my kids didn’t get the memo. My son didn’t want dolls (even the infamous “My Buddy”) and the girls wouldn’t play with trucks. My boy would even use sticks as guns when playing “cops”.
They can’t change us or our kids into what THEY want us, or them to be.
When I was a little girl my grandmother took me to the toy store to buy me any toy that I wanted. It created a *huge* misunderstanding!
First, I chose a 45’ long stuffed snake. Grandma was horrified. (I was *thinking* about winding it around and having a cozy place to read.)
Next, she tried to persuade me to choose a Barbie. I chose the Lone Ranger Action Figure with articulating Trigger!) I was *thinking* that I’d finally have a good boyfriend for my Barbies and I’d get a pretty pony out of the deal!)
I wasn’t interested in the dolls or stuffed animals (except the snake) at all. (I already had dozens of those and my mother had made them all custom outfits and accessories like diapers and blankets. The last thing I needed was another doll.)
Poor grandma actually worried that there was something wrong with me. I was too young to articulate my motivations. We didn’t live close and didn’t see much of each other after that. I think she died thinking that I might be gay.
by 9 months....kids have already received a tremendous amount of influence...the test simply can’t be valid...
More anecdotes: At our local park they have a some monkey bars in the shape of a bus. The structure has a steering wheel and passenger seats. They boys get on and immediately start steering the bus. The girls get on an sit in passenger seats. 100%
The daughter of a friend moved home with her little boy. Her husband was overseas. The little boy was raised in a house with three women, all very feminine. The little boy’s favorite activity was sitting at the window looking at every truck that went by. He was totally fixated on trucks of every kind.
It’s hard wired! And our tax dollars fund a study about something we already know.
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