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Can toys be toys?

Socialization of gender. A look at gender specific toys
What toys look like today

Boy
Girl

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What gender specific toys do for children

 “Girl toys” tend to groom girls from a young age to be prepared for housework and
motherhood with all the kitchen sets and baby dolls.
 “Boy toys” tend to teach boys that sports are meant only for boys and promote violence
with all the toy guns and video games aimed towards them.
 There is clear evidence that children over the age of two years typically prefer toys
stereotyped to their own sex.
 As in modern society, girls’ play with “male-typed” toys is often encouraged more than
boys’ play with toys related to a care-giving role.
Are gender specific toys a hazard to
children?
The way toys are marketed

 Sociologist Elizabeth Sweet, at the California State University, Sacramento, analyzed more than
7,300 toys in Sears catalogs from the 20th century. She discovered that gender-based toy ads
from the 1920s to the 1950s pushed traditional roles: the “little homemaker”; the “young man of
industry.”
 In 1925, about half the toys in the Sears catalog were marketed explicitly to either boys or girls.
Many toy advertisements appealed to boys as “young entrepreneurs,” with a sales pitch to use
on their parents.
 In 1945, with World War II winding down and many women leaving factories for domestic life,
Sweet says toys were “overwhelmingly targeted at girls in a very explicit way: Your little girl will
love this dish set!”
 A 2012 study by Carol Auster, a sociologist at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania,
examined the retail website of Disney, one of the most powerful children's tastemakers, and saw
that every single toy was categorized as either “girl toys” or “boy toys”.
 With the second-wave feminist movement in full swing, the 1970s saw a near-elimination of
gendered toys: Only 2 percent of toys in the 1975 Sears catalog were marketed explicitly to
boys or girls. Even the small fraction of gender-specific toys—Barbie, for example—were mostly
outfitted in primary, gender-neutral colors: red, yellow, blue.
Children's Gender-Based Reasoning about
Toys

 The goal of these studies was to investigate how preschool children use gender-based reasoning in making
judgments about toy preferences for themselves and for others.
 To examine children's use of gender based inferences when they do not know the sex-typing of a toy, we simply
asked children to make judgments about how much they and others would like a set of unfamiliar, non-sex-typed
toys. If children show an egocentric pattern of responding, we should find that their judgments of how much other
girls and boys like the toys will vary with their own liking of the toys. If children show the expected gender-centric
pattern, their judgments of how much children of the same sex like the toys should be similar to their judgments of
how much they like the toys, whereas their judgments of how much children of the other sex like the toys should not
match their own preferences
 A consistent finding in the developmental literature is that children prefer toys traditionally stereotyped for their own
sex more than toys stereotyped for the other sex.
 One consequence of children selecting own-sex-stereotyped is that it limits their experiences.
 Different types of toys encourage distinctly different types of play and learning.
 Cognitive theories of gender-role acquisition are based on the idea that children socialize themselves into gender
roles.
 Once children learn gender labels, their behavior often changes so that it matches stereotypic expectations.
 The findings suggest that children predicted others' liking of toys using gendercentric patterns. For these novel toys,
children's judgments were influenced by gender. Children matched their predictions about others' liking of toys to
the sex of the person and their own liking of the toy.
Gender stereotyping in infancy

 Infants’ visual preferences for gender-stereotyped toys and their knowledge of stereotyped toys were examined in
two experiments using an adaptation of the preferential looking paradigm.
 Girls and boys aged 12, 18, and 24 months were tested for their preference for photos of vehicles or dolls, and for
whether they associated (‘‘matched’’) these two stereotyped sets of toys with the faces and voices of male and
female children.
 Children have been observed to display toy preferences that are consistent with gender stereotypes as early as 14 to
20 months of age.
 It has been suggested that early preferences for stereotyped toys may direct girls’ and boys’ cognitive and social
development, via differential practice of the skills associated with different types of play materials and activities.
 Children’s preference for stereotyped toys may be due to their knowledge of those stereotypes.
 Response at 12 months of age. At this age, a significant main effect of type of toy indicated that children of both
sexes showed a visual preference for dolls over trucks. No evidence of gender-stereotyped preferences was found at
this age level.
 At 18 months boys showed more visual interest in the male sex-typed vehicles than girls did, and girls looked longer at
the dolls than boys did. As at 12 months, however, there was no evidence of ‘‘matching’’ type of toy to gender
categories.
 Response at 23 months. At this age, a significant main effect of toy indicated that, in general, the children looked
more at the vehicles than at the dolls.
 In sum, visual preferences for gender-stereotyped toys appeared to emerge between 12 and 18 months of age, and
remained evident at 23 months.
Preschoolers’ Perceptions of Gender
Appropriate Toys

 This study involved 3- and 5-year-old children in identifying ‘‘girl toys’’ and ‘‘boy toys’’. It also asked them
to predict their parents’ reactions to their choices of gender-specific toys.
 These children’s parents were surveyed in an effort to describe their preferences about gender-specific
toys and behaviors. Responses indicated that, in spite of evidence that many of these parents reject
common gender stereotypes, their children predicted parents would consistently apply these stereotypes
as reflected by their approval or disapproval of children’s choices to play with gender stereotyped or cross-
gender toys.
 Preschoolers have been shown, for example, to reliably apply gender stereotypes when responding to
questions about how their parents, teachers or babysitters, peers, and siblings would want them to play.
Girls know they are expected to play with dish sets and baby dolls and boys know tools, trucks, and cars
are for them.
 These results have been interpreted as evidence that adults share concerns that boys who exhibit
crossgender behaviors will become increasingly feminine, but believe that girls will outgrow their
‘‘tomboyishness’’ and will become as feminine as their ‘‘typical’’ female peers.
 It has been documented, moreover, that fathers often more rigidly impose sex role expectations on their
sons than on their daughters, and that they are less flexible in their definitions of gender appropriate
behaviors than are boys’ mothers.
Do you stereotype children?
Progress

 Developmental psychologists and sociologists are happy to finally see pushback from
parents.
 The White House held a conference on gender stereotypes in toys and media, with many
toy manufacturers and experts attending.
 After feedback, Target announced in 2015 that it would get rid of signs labeling toys for
boys or for girls.
 A UK campaign called Let Toys Be Toys seeks to get retailers to stop categorizing toys and
books for one gender only
Bibliography

 Daly, Natasha. “How Today's Toys May Be Harming Your Daughter.” National Geographic, National
Geographic Partners, LLC, 15 Dec. 2016, www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/01/gender-toys-
departments-piece/. Accessed 16 November 2017.
 Freeman, Nancy K. “Preschoolers' Perceptions of Gender Appropriate Toys and Their Parents' Beliefs About
Genderized Behaviors: Miscommunication, Mixed Messages, or Hidden Truths?” Early Childhood Education
Journal, vol. 34, no. 5, 2007, pp. 357–366., doi:10.1007/s10643-006-0123-x. Accessed 16 November 2017.
 Martin, Carol Lynn, et al. “Children's Gender-Based Reasoning about Toys.” Child Development, vol. 66, no. 5,
1995, p. 1453., doi:10.2307/1131657. Accessed 16 November 2017.
 Oksman, Olga. “Are gendered toys harming childhood development?” The Guardian, Guardian News and
Media, 28 May 2016, www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/28/toys-kids-girls-boys-childhood-
development-gender-research. Accessed 16 November 2017.
 Serbin, Lisa A., et al. “Gender Stereotyping in Infancy: Visual Preferences for and Knowledge of Gender-
Stereotyped Toys in the Second Year.” International Journal of Behavioral Development, vol. 25, no. 1, 2001,
pp. 7–15., doi:10.1080/01650250042000078. Accessed 16 November 2017.
 Todd, Brenda. “Should You Buy Girls Dolls and Boys Trucks This Christmas?” Newsweek, NEWSWEEK LLC, 24 Dec.
2016, www.newsweek.com/christmas-children-gender-gendered-toy-gender-preferences-533756. Accessed
16 November 2017.