When my colleague Corinne Purtill purchased her doll-loving child an engineering kit, she needed to laugh once the then-three-year-old used the current as being a hairbrush. For several Corinne’s efforts at gender-neutral parenting, her child plainly enjoyed some typically feminine toys.
A research published (paywall) in November 2017 shows that these types of girly model preferences aren’t just a reflection of gendered social pressures.
A meta-analysis of research, reviewing 16 studies about the subject that collectively included some 1,600 kiddies, unearthed that both society and biology affect guys’ and girls’ model alternatives. The scientists discovered an effect that is huge (1.03 for men having fun with boys’ toys a lot more than girls, and 0.9 for females using girls toys significantly more than guys; such a thing above 0.8 is considered “large”) across geographic areas.
“The measurements of intercourse variations in children’s choices for male-typed and female-typed toys failed to look like smaller in studies conducted much more egalitarian nations,” says Brenda Todd, a research co-author and senior lecturer in therapy at City University London. Continue reading “Scientific studies have shown sex isn’t only a social construct”