Thanks to Tina over at the new Scatterplot, I just found a fantastic blog: outside the (toy) box. Here is an excellent post about gender socialization through toys. Plus the author maintains a helpful list of anti-sexist/anti-consumerist children’s books. Additions to that list here or there are welcomed.
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Pope Ratzo 11.23.07 at 5:30 pm
When I was a kid, I really wanted to play the piano. My older sister got the piano lessons, and my family, Italian immigrants, overspent to get a piano in the house. For some reason, piano lessons were something that only girls got, I was told. My sister played the piano a bit, but was never really serious about it. Finally, after a lot of lobbying, I was granted a guitar and some lessons, which started me on a lifelong love of music and a path to being a professional musician.
Today, my daughter, who has never shown much interest in playing music, but a love of martial arts and dancing, has taught me that trying to push an agenda on kids is a bad idea. Her favorite toys were a microscope and stuffed animals. I don’t know what effect this had, but she’s in a pre-med program at the State U.
When I give a kid a present now, it’s almost always some sort of musical instrument or toy. Let them use their own imaginations when it comes to who they’re gonna be, but give them a way to let the music out.
noen 11.23.07 at 7:43 pm
I have mixed feelings about socialization vs genetics, nature vs nurture. On the one hand social pressure to conform is very powerful. On the other the more we have learned about genetics the more it seems there are real differences that go far beyond genitalia. However, current research points more towards how powerfully our genetic make up determines our behavior and less at how social environment does. Maybe that will change in the future but for now the nature side of the debate seems to have the stronger case.
There was a famous feminist who tried to raise her son to be gender neutral. It didn’t work. It didn’t work because her theory that people are gender neutral at birth, that everything we see relating to gender is socially constructed, was wrong. The reverse is also probably false. The idea that we are completely defined by our genetics, that biology is destiny, is too simplistic.
Maybe we need a new discipline that explores the relationship between social behavior and genetics. Let’s call it “Sociobiology”. Oh wait… There are certain conversations that we on the left cannot engage in rationally. This is one of them. People feel vulnerable, I suppose, because they are afraid of what they believe happens of they “lose”. You really sure you want to open this can of worms? Because in my experience it gets really ugly really fast.
trying to push an agenda on kids is a bad idea.
I couldn’t agree more. Children are not blank slates and musical aptitude does not seem to be evenly distributed. Sometimes I wonder if this controversy isn’t more between those who wish to project their own agenda onto others, especially their children, and those who do not. That doesn’t necessarily break along party lines after all.
matthias 11.23.07 at 8:01 pm
Gender doesn’t need prediscursive existence to assert itself against parental wishes. Parents just need to not be the only agents of socialization, or to lack total control over how they socialize. Which, obviously, obtain.
noen 11.23.07 at 8:28 pm
Sure, that’s one theory. Although she did try very hard to eliminate all outside influence and still failed to produce her ideal of an androgynous child. The obvious conclusion is that her theory that humans are innately gender neutral was wrong. The assertion that gender has no “prediscursive existence” at all is patently absurd. That is political ideology.
Walt 11.23.07 at 9:03 pm
I think from the fact that my daughter knows who Spiderman and Dora the Explorer are, despite the fact that I try to insulate her from consumer marketing, conclusively proves that children are genetically predisposed to know about Spiderman and Dora the Explorer. If you look carefully at the cave paintings at Lascaux, France, you can make out the Spiderman figures among the deer.
dutchmarbel 11.23.07 at 10:46 pm
Even noticing the difference in behaviour after my three sons were exposed to ‘group behaviour’ in school I still firmly believe there is an inborn gender difference. I didn’t used to, I was brought up thinking the genders would be alike if all nurture factors were equal, but since I have kids and am surrounded by little kids I’ve come to the conclusion that I just didn’t know enough small children by than. I’m not talking fire-truck vs barbie; my sons aren’t much into cars and love their cuddles and dolls. But none of the girls they play with are as likely to participate in the knigt/martian/zombie fighting game. The individual child can have intrests and/or behaviour that differs from the gender generic, but there really is a gender difference. I’m taller than all the non-Dutch friends my husband has, but that doesn’t mean that on average men no longer taller than women.
My middle son loves pink, cares about clothes, always wants to cook, draws hearts all over the place and plays more with girls than with boys. But he is also more mechanical, more the engineer, than his two brothers and can play with robots and dinosauriers for hours on end – and those aren’t having thea-parties ;)
When they bring home girls, the play is different than when they bring home boys. Which doesn’t mean that they are not influenced by their environment – it won’t be long before my youngest doesn’t want to play Dora all the time because all Dora colleteral is pink and everybody knows pink is for girls (he is more susceptible to that pressure than his brothers are).
I think the ‘gender neutral’ idea is as bad as the polarizing of ‘only for girls’ vs ‘what real boys want’. Within the frame of acknowledging the gender differences there just should be enough room for individual preferences, without weighting those down with communal prejudices.
pedro 11.24.07 at 12:10 am
Three comments:
(1) Walt’s comment is hilarious.
(2) Dutchmarbel’s interesting testimony notwithstanding, the fact of the matter is that there really is overwhelming cultural (through pop culture, toy segregation, etc.) pressure on children to adopt “appropriate” gender roles. One may believe, as Dutchmarbel does, that gender differences are not completely culturally constructed, and still think that things would likely be quite different if the cultural pressures diminished somewhat.
(3) In general, I do find it a bit annoying, in light of (2), that whenever someone correctly pays attention to the cultural mechanisms of gender-construction, that someone–like noen in this case–just has to jump in and remind us that not everything is socially constructed, and that nature has a say in these things. I find it very implausible that our current consumer culture reflects a “natural” state of affairs, and that it responds harmoniously (according to some free-market principles) to the demands of baby genes and hormones. This is ludicrous.
Eszter 11.24.07 at 12:18 am
What I find especially unhelpful about Noen’s comment is that it doesn’t address the post I link to at all in any specifics. It’s just an anonymous general comment about genetics vs socialization. Yawn. As Pedro points out, it misses most of the point made in the other post, which makes me wonder if the author even read that post.
UPDATE on the book issue, I went to a Barnes and Noble this afternoon and could find a few of the books recommended on that list, but the helpful person at the kids’ section had never heard of several authors on that list, which itself shows that certain types of literature is just not mainstream period.
Note that The Gift of Nothing by Patrick McDonnell is especially adorable. I picked up another one by him as well, Hug Time.
noen 11.24.07 at 12:27 am
The idea that pink is for girls and blue for boys is clearly a social construction. Almost a hundred years ago pink was considered a strong masculine color and it was obvious to people that blue is a weak feminine color. Those attitudes changed when Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy” came to the nation Gallery and everything reversed.
I agree with Shalizi that generalized intelligence is a myth. Though obviously some people are smarter than others. It’s equally true that race is an unscientific concept even though some people have dark skin and kinky hair.
Some behaviors might be the result of the sheer physicality of being female or male. If you are a person who happens to have a uterus that means you can potentially bear children. And that reality is going to affect you. If you are a male with a powerful steroid coursing through your veins that sheer fact is going to affect your behavior also.
It seems very complicated to me and I haven’t the slightest idea what the “truth” is. What I see though is people on both the left and the right with an agenda muddying the waters. In general I agree with Shalizi that sometimes the left has some goofy ideas that are annoying and that “Much of the left has, sadly, faded into crankishness; the right is a well-organized band of cruel, dangerous, selfish liars. It’s not a hard choice.”
It is a clear choice for me too, though less so of late. I wish some wouldn’t work so hard to make it more difficult for me but that seems to be the times we live in.
noen 11.24.07 at 1:11 am
I find it very implausible that our current consumer culture reflects a “natural†state of affairs, and that it responds harmoniously (according to some free-market principles) to the demands of baby genes and hormones. This is ludicrous.
I agree. So where does the truth lie? Somewhere in the middle between “gender has no prediscursive existence” and “biology is destiny”?
What I find especially unhelpful about Noen’s comment is that it doesn’t address the post I link to at all in any specifics.
That’s odd.
She seems to have a lot to say about “genetics vs socialization”. I just have a different opinion. Is it ok to have a difference of opinion here?
I don’t buy the notion that one’s genetic make up has no say what so ever when it comes to gender. Maybe there is no such thing as “gender” just as “general intelligence” is a statistical myth. I have not seen evidence that this is so. What evidence I have seen does seem to point in the other direction. Or maybe that is just an error on my part.
dutchmarbel 11.24.07 at 1:27 am
One may believe, as Dutchmarbel does, that gender differences are not completely culturally constructed, and still think that things would likely be quite different if the cultural pressures diminished somewhat.
Oh, I agree with you. I thought my “Within the frame of acknowledging the gender differences there just should be enough room for individual preferences, without weighting those down with communal prejudices.” made that clear. Cultural pressure should leave room to acknowledge that the individual is entitled to his or her favourite toy/activity without having to fight peer pressure. But if you state that they *shouldn’t* favour what they like best because you want hem to fight the role pattern, you’re not helping either.
It is a stupid example, but my oldest boys liked pink and got teased in class because they did (when they were 5, 6 years old) – both girls and boys had decided that pink was only for girls. I tell them that it seems rather stupid to forbid liking a colour to one gender, especially since there is no reciprocation. But that they have to decide for themselves how important standing up for their preference is. If it is important, they should fight peer pressure, if it is not that important it’s easier to just follow the groupthink. Now the oldest two (9 and 7) defend the boy’s right to like pink, the youngest one (5) adapts and scorns pink.
I think that the main thing I want to teach them is to look critically and decide for themselves. But if one of their heroes would decide to wear pink it would have more impact than a year of talking common sense into them. The fact that papa cooks half the time makes the cooking set a more agreeable present and seeing fathers care for babies will have more impact than buying them barbies. There is gender-directing but it goes way further than toys and just changing the toys won’t change things.
However, denying that there is also a gender difference won’t make the differences go away – it might even make it harder to accept how and what they are. When they have girls over they still play with their plastic dinosaurs – but the content of the game is almost always different. With boys there always is more noise, more physical activity, more jumping up and down. You can recognize that and still appreciate girls trying to beat papa or mama in wrestling.
Eszter 11.24.07 at 1:58 am
Noen: toys and play.
vivian 11.24.07 at 2:25 am
Readers might want to look at Mark Liberman’s recent series in Language Log about how sex differences in the brain – small but real and there – are completely misunderstood and manipulated.* His point is, yes, there are some systematic differences between male and female group means, but these differences are typically dwarfed by the within-group variation. So drawing lessons that boys need X while girls need Y means that all children who are not exactly at the group mean for their sex are showhorned into a Procrustean role.
Yes, as a parent, when planning a day with multiple young boys(with no other information) I try to build in more time for running around into the day than when it’s a mixed-sex playdate, and I do the same thing for younger children than older ones. But that’s just a prior belief, actual kids I know rarely approximate the mean.
Like I said in some previous incarnation of this thread, I’ll be delighted to talk innate differences with you, just wake me up when we have eliminated all the social pressures on girls to be quiet and dainty, and on boys to be tough. Until then, talk of innateness is code for “your position is not my problem.”
*By at least two groups: journalists who use science trappings as raw material to recreate their favorite social stories, and educational consultants who get big bucks for “professional development classes” for public schools, sometimes making things up. It starts here
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004981.html
and each episode has a pointer to the next. Copy and paste, thus avoid hold-for-moderation. (He credits http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/the-debate-on-female-happiness-heats-up/ for inspiration.)
noen 11.24.07 at 4:00 am
Thank you for that, I’ll read it.
“Until then, talk of innateness is code for ‘your position is not my problem.'”
Not for me. For me talk of innateness is me trying to figure out some personal issues that you are unaware of.
magistra 11.24.07 at 9:28 am
You don’t have to believe in a child as a blank slate to want non-sexist toys (or at least a better choice) for them. Your child will have their own interests/desires/preferences, of course. But what you want to do is stop these choices being narrowed by social pressures at an early age. If you feel you can’t give small boys dolls or girls construction sets, then you’re depriving them of the option to discover that those are the things they really like playing with. I can’t see how even those who believe in ‘innate’ differences should object to this kind of choice for children.
As they get older you can observe what they do like and adapt accordingly: biological sex may play some part, but so will a lot of other personal characteristics. My husband is teaching my five-year old daughter to play chess, which she is enjoying. I don’t want her told that she shouldn’t learn that because only boys play chess. Similarly, I don’t see why she should have to choose between dressing up as a fairy and dressing up as a knight, both of which she enjoys.
James Wimberley 11.24.07 at 10:15 am
The basic research here is easy and cheap. Lay out trays of pink dolls and plastic rocket launchers (etc) in front of boys and girl babies and toddlers of different ages, and observe what thy pick. You need to blind the trials with male and female researchers of course. For variation, dress some of the dolls in camouflage fatigues (etc) and make some of the rocket launchers pink (etc), so you can sort out which characteristics if any are systematically preferred by one gender or the other: pinkness, softness, noisiness, projectileness, wheels, etc.
The “gender is all constructed” hypothesis would predict that the choices of very young babies show no systematic gender bias; and (more trickily) that toddlers reared in unbiased environments don’t show gender bias in toy choice either. The “innate gender” hypothesis predicts that some significant biases in preferences are robust under free choice of toys.
Well, hasn’t it been done? Otherwise it’s all anecdote and speculation.
Katherine 11.24.07 at 10:45 am
THe trouble with the “lining up toys in front of babies” idea is that actual babies can’t pick things up, they have to have things given to them. The blinding would have to be not female and male researchers so much, but that the researchers wouldn’t know whether the babies were male or female.
I read somewhere (yep, that’s reliable) that an experiment was done showing that researchers, when told what gender a baby was, would more often hand them the “gender appropriate” toy – the toy truck to the boys, and the doll to the girls, say.
Barry 11.24.07 at 1:32 pm
noen: “However, current research points more towards how powerfully our genetic make up determines our behavior and less at how social environment does. Maybe that will change in the future but for now the nature side of the debate seems to have the stronger case.”
Yes, all of this high-quality research. None of which, you might have noticed, has made it to this blog. All that we see is endlessly Bell Curve BS, which itself was reheated BS from the 50’s, 40’s, 30’s, etc.
Eszter 11.24.07 at 3:30 pm
On the issue of pink and blue and how historically pink was associated with boys and blue with girls (although initially they were all dressed in white), see the quote I posted to this entry a few years ago as part of a related discussion. (See the italicized bit after UPDATE.)
jayann 11.24.07 at 5:03 pm
Lay out trays of pink dolls and plastic rocket launchers (etc) in front of boys and girl babies and toddlers of different ages,
too late. Research (!) shows that women handed a baby aged six months interact with it differently when it’s dressed in blue (pink).
Katherine, we aren’t talking about the same research, I think, so there are two relevant sets of data…
jayann 11.24.07 at 5:06 pm
about how sex differences in the brain – small but real and there – are completely misunderstood and manipulated.*
and see
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Mars-Venus-different-languages/dp/0199214476/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195923917&sr=1-1
harry b 11.24.07 at 6:45 pm
The research jayann mentions is from the University of the Bleeding Obvious, I assume. (Not insulting you, jayann, but anyone who thinks that gender isn’t being socialised starightaway from birth). In my youngest child’s early weeks we dressed him in the clothes he had inherited from his sisters (and they rom their very young aunts); as soon as people were told that he wasn’t a girl their voices toward him would instantly change, and the words they spoke too. His sisters (now 6 and 11) are both insistent, and have been from birth, that he is different from them as a boy, and are mortified by my lack of interest in, for example, what clothes he wears. My eldest delights in his preference for me over his mother, and tries to identify him with me, and is convinced its because he’s a boy. She did not note her younger sister’s similar behaviour at the time. Its pervasive.
noen 11.24.07 at 8:23 pm
Barry @ 18
“Yes, all of this high-quality research. None of which, you might have noticed, has made it to this blog. All that we see is endlessly Bell Curve BS, which itself was reheated BS from the 50’s, 40’s, 30’s, etc.”
I’m not arguing Bell Curve. That is crap science. I read the link to Mark’s post and I understand what he was trying to say. That small statistical variations within groups are incorrectly perceived to belong to the group as a whole.
I’m going to drop this. It seems it’s impossible to have this discussion.
jw 11.24.07 at 8:53 pm
The thing that bugs me about the blog post regarding non-sexist books is that they’re all books about girls who don’t fit “traditional/ conservative” gender models. They’re not really non-sexist as they are non-traditional (for lack of a better word). Still, they’re books about girls (you know, the ones with vaginas).
Considering that commercial publishing, and especially children’s books, is dominated by females, where are the books for boys who don’t conform to the standard “traditional” models? Is “non-sexist” a term reserved for girls only?
OK, the writer of the blog post says that her (?) son is only an infant and she hasn’t looked for books for him yet, but I’ll say (as the father of both sons and daughters), that it is much, much, much easier to find quality books for girls than it is for boys.
Sometimes it sucks to be a boy.
mijnheer 11.24.07 at 9:27 pm
Yes, there is a fire-truck gene. Most progressive, anti-sexism adults (like myself) discover this fact once they have children. Culture plays a large role, but mainly in terms of reinforcing and exaggerating in-born propensities. That’s no excuse for denying every child the opportunity to be what she or he wants to be, and some girls will discover they want to become engineers, just as some boys will choose to become pastry chefs. Gender stereotyping should be kept to a minimum in children’s books, programming, etc. But the idea that gender is all just socialization is a politically correct fantasy.
harry b 11.24.07 at 11:04 pm
jw – It sucks being a boy, sure. But it will also suck for these girls who, when they reach adulthood, are surrounded by men who were socialised to be traditionally male, while they, the girls, were socialised into a wider range of role-options. I have two girls and a boy who is, as I said above, still v. little. I’m planning on reading him lots of girls books, and hoping that he’ll absorb enough influences from the rest of us to expand his range in the way that there is no effort needed for the girls.
But the Paper Bag Princess is bloody good for boys and girls, I should say!
eudoxis 11.24.07 at 11:28 pm
The question “Is there a fire truck gene?” is irrelevant in looking at the magnitude of influence sex stereotyped toys have on gender sex role choices or gender identification in later life.
There is evidence that toy preferences start very early in life, even before gender identification, and that gender identification is very strongly influenced by other humans and their roles and behavior.
Where keeping toys neutral can expand choices for many children, the fanatic refusal to disallow sex stereotyped toys (typcially, not allowing daughters to play with Barbies)is fruitless. Parents who limit toy choices to sex-stereotyped toys sound stifling and are probably so in many ways. Openminded parents allow multiple choices and where preferences happen to agree with sex-stereotyped choices, that is okay, too.
Any parent who thinks that they can stop the tide of gender socialialization by early book and toy choices are, perhaps, a little idealistic. Perhaps their children are still very young.
eudoxis 11.24.07 at 11:31 pm
For instance, is there any evidence that the generations of boys and girls raised in white and, I might add, had equally long hair, resulted in generations of adults with dampened gender effects?
jayann 11.25.07 at 1:36 am
harry b, much research is, as you and I well know, from the University of the Bleeding Obvious. I well remember the Sociology Ph.D. gained for showing, by participant observation, that men in pubs use sexist language… But that is not more Bleeding Obvious than much work in more obviously Big Deal social science (I don’t feel like listing pol. sci. etc. examples right now). And sometimes people need to be told the bleeding obvious (not about pubs perhaps, but certainly about treatment of babies, according to their assumed sex — *sex*, not gender — from birth on). Certainly some posters in this thread do. And the people who do need to be told include parents who would, one might assume, have noticed how, and how early, gender socialization occurs. But of course for many, it is taken for granted, as natural, is not, in a sense, even seen. (Maybe they should all read Garfinkel’s _Story of Agnes_; maybe they should be made to read it more than once.)
[You might find Deborah Cameron’s book less bleeding obvious.]
Also, the longer I remain a feminist (I’ve been an offical second wave feminist for nearly 40 years) the more I realise that feminists, feminist academics included, have to say it all again and again, bleeding obvious or no. Difference feminism has of course only made it more necessary for those of us who are decidedly not difference feminists to keep on saying it, but there is more to it than that.
Katherine 11.25.07 at 1:32 pm
“Yes, there is a fire-truck gene.” – wow, mijnheer, you have the answer! Now, care to point us to some actual evidence for that answer?
I don’t think (m)any people posting here are saying that gender is all socialization. As Magista said above, you don’t have to believe in a child as a blank slate to want non-sexist toys. Can we please put that strawman/woman to bed now?
Kate Smith 11.25.07 at 2:09 pm
Here’s a link to a post I wrote on the The Pink Princess Gene
Eszter 11.25.07 at 3:31 pm
Jayann, I don’t think Harry B was trying to be derogatory when he mentioned the Univ of the BO, I think his point was that it’s so obvious we should all know it. EXCEPT, as this thread clearly shows, it’s not! And thanks, Katherine, I agree, which is why my reaction to Noen’s initial comment was “yawn”.
JW, several of the books on that list are pretty gender neutral. The McDonnell books work with anyone (although likely not for super young kids though). Also, both the Mommy Book and the Daddy Book, while seemingly each gendered, actually works well in either case. (The store only had the latter so I only bought that. But the message is similar: no matter your parents’ gender, they do all sorts of things.)
That said, generally speaking, I’ve been amazed at how hard it is to find books that don’t conform to stereotypes either way. It’s very annoying and disappointing.
harry b 11.25.07 at 3:39 pm
Hi — yes, jayann, I really wasn’t being derogatory either of you or of the research, just of the people who need to be told these things! I realise you’re right that things need saying over and over, and find it at one level depressing, but at another completely mystifying (I can see, for example, why one might need to make a big deal of the claim that the world is round, because it really does look flat, but anyone who has kids can see how socialisation produces gender unless they are determined not to!) And katherine’s comment is right too — I haven’t heard anyone saying it was all socialisation for 20 years, and I live among the very people who would say that if anyone did!
stevek 11.25.07 at 5:04 pm
But there is a fair amount of research that does show that children’s toy preferences are influenced by prenatal exposure to androgen. Girls who have been exposed to abnormally high levels of androgen in utero show preferences for “boy toys” throughout childhood. This is true in spite of the powerful influences of socialization. Moreover, these findings hold for play preferences of other primates and mammals. For instance:
http://tinyurl.com/2rhr7l
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/003390.html)
Since high in utero androgen level are prototypical of male fetuses, there does seem to be a genetic contribution.
jayann 11.25.07 at 6:16 pm
just of the people who need to be told these things
oh well OK (I had a really bad evening!, had to stay up to sort things out, was ready for a fight without actually wanting one… ; and I do think the research was worthwhile).
I realise you’re right that things need saying over and over, and find it at one level depressing, but at another completely mystifying
well yes. I don’t find it all that mystifying now, but depressing, yes.
jw yes it sucks being a boy; particularly, it sucks — apparently — for young men who are in some way as it were ‘feminine’, whether they are gay or not.
noen, I’ve a feeling there’s something specific you want to say and haven’t felt able to say. That is, you say
I don’t buy the notion that one’s genetic make up has no say what so ever when it comes to gender.
but don’t give any examples of gendered traits you believe might be sexed traits. I find it difficult to discuss your contention given that.
hela 11.25.07 at 6:54 pm
My first question about this nature/nurture debate is – Why do we care so much?!
It seems that those who argue hard for nurture want an excuse – for boys/men to be aggressive, unemotional, and violent and for girls/women to keep quiet, take care of children (and everyone else), and be emotional and needy. Gender is real because it is real in its consequences. Will we ever “prove†that gender is biological – or that it’s socially constructed? Probably not – because I just don’t see how we can separate the two. I mean, really – a fetus doesn’t have a chance – we find out the sex of a fetus and immediately gender it – colors, toys, the words we use to describe it, how we respond to and play with it once it’s born. What we CAN observe is that gender means different things in different cultures and has varied greatly over time. Not so long ago in the U.S. women couldn’t wear pants (at least without some negative sanctions) and it was clear to many that higher education ruined women’s reproductive organs (college educated women didn’t have babies, had fewer babies, and/or didn’t have them much later in life – so clearly all of this knowledge was causing them harm – couldn’t possibly have been that they had something else to do…). And – what about intersex people? They may have any number of combinations of female and male sex characteristics – but we don’t seem to have a third (or fourth, fifth, sixth) gender based on this natural occurrence. We expect them to do femininity or masculinity appropriately regardless of what’s under their clothes or the combination of their chromosomes. Just one more thing and I’ll stop – the goal is NOT androgyny or to “get rid of gender†– the goal is for each person to be their own full selves – and to be valued for that. Our binary gender system doesn’t allow for a middle ground so girls and boys, women and men who break gender norms are viewed as being masculine instead of feminine, etc. – why not just have humans? That way we can have sensitive nurturing men and competitive stoic women and we think it’s just fine that way. Because it is.
SusanC 11.25.07 at 7:28 pm
I’m slightly puzzled as to what the argument in this thread is really about.
Is Noen making on plea on behalf of all the boys who really wanted a fire-truck, but their mother bought them a Barbie doll instead? This kind of thing surely happens, and I can see that point that it is – in its own way – just as bad as more “traditional” families that don’t let boys play with dolls.
Childrens’ toys are often bought by their mothers, so straight off there’s a conflict that the toy has to appeal both to the desires of the mother who buys it and and the child it’s bought for. Then we’ve added to this conflict of desires the idea that society can be changed for the better by gender neutral toys – so mothers are more tempted to buy feminine toys for male children. Which is just fine if that’s what the child wants. But I take it, the point is that often it’s not what they want, even if it’s allegedly good for them.
PS. My friend’s 4-year old son loves playing with Barbie. And her friend, the plush dinosaur, etc….
stevek 11.25.07 at 7:55 pm
stevek wrote:
stevek 11.25.07 at 7:55 pm
stevek wrote:
noen 11.25.07 at 8:07 pm
but don’t give any examples of gendered traits you believe might be sexed traits. I find it difficult to discuss your contention given that.
Nothing good can come of that and I don’t feel as though I can be heard anyway. I’ve taken the thread off topic enough. This thread is about toys.
About toys, I think they don’t make a whole lot of difference. What matters more is how you model your behavior for your children. How you behave will have a greater influence on the kind of person your children become than the toys they play with or stories they read. You need to get their mirror neurons firing and model reading by reading if you want them to grow up with a love of books. That will make a greater difference than the content of the texts you happen to read to them.
The schema or script that we live our lives by doesn’t by and large come from books or toys. Maybe some of it does but I think most comes from those around us as we grow up. When children play they are rehearsing behaviors they have already learned. So if a parent wants their child to be X, they need to be X, within limits. Which makes parenting the ultimate form of self analysis.
bemused 11.25.07 at 8:09 pm
For those of you who used to read “Respectful of Otters”, see this post:
Gender roles in the nursery
emjaybee 11.26.07 at 1:05 am
Given that a very famous study showed that when given an *infant* with it’s genitalia covered, adults talked to it differently based on what they were told its gender to be, I am amazed that people still continue to argue that children they meet at say, age 18 months or 2 years are some sort of non-socialized example of gender. By the time you meet someone else’s child, they are already socialized by their parents and/or the society around them.
As for your own children, most parents don’t like to believe how much influence other people and kids have on them. But they do. Raising your child “androgynously” would require a desert island and most likely your experiment would still fall victim to your own unrecognized socialization in gender responses and cues.
Which is why critical examinations of these roles are so important; we cannot “block them out” so we have to take their power into account, and do our best to modify the unjust messages traditionally carried by gender roles in most societies.
vivian 11.26.07 at 2:51 am
Noen, I’m sorry to have hurt you regarding some personal issues you’re working on in private. If you want to be heard, I’ll listen. It would help us to read you correctly if you would distinguish points about your life and your private influences, from general claims about socialization and sexism in the wider world. Most of the points here are about the latter, generalizations and variations in society. But not all of them. So, please say what is going on – it sounds important.
mom 11.26.07 at 3:04 am
Wow, a blogger takes a few days for Thanksgiving and all hell breaks loose. Thanks to Ezster for her interest in my post and thanks to those of you who found it worth discussing.
If I can contextualize for a moment, had I meant to enter a debate over biological detreminism with a bunch of academics, I would have written a position paper, not a wistful reflection about my son’s 1st birthday. Of course, the fact that I did feel overwhelmed by the wheels of socialization and the taken-for-grantedness of these gender rules speaks to something, no?
Even if sex differences are vast and immutable, isn’t the social component astonishing? Sex is a biological category (itself imperfect, as hela reminds us) gender — the subject of my post — is a social category, marked most notably by a series of widely held assumptions and expectations based on sex category. My son’s birthday, is testament to these expectations. And, for me, is sobering.
These expectations are communicated to us from innumerable sources — parents, peers, media, school, religion, etc. They are communicated even in birthday gifts and chance urban encounters (listen to the way stangers engage kids differently based on gender).
And yet, circulating narrartives deny the social role. This is the rough edge of the pill. Given the amount of work that goes in — why isn’t this bleeding obvious? Why do so many of us only see those examples that reaffiirm our existing hypotheses (of difference) and discard all the exceptions? It makes me batty. There is more variation within groups than between groups, but we reify that bianry, rewrite it, and then swear it’s just the way things are.
And, escaping the expectations isn’t just about being strong enough to make different choices. See Betsy Lucal’s amazing and widely reprinted article that chronicles her efforts to avoid being gendered:
http://gas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/6/781
Part of what makes gender so complicated is that it is so often attributed to biological sex category — social expectations seen as destiny — and these lawlike understandings of men and women (or boys and girls) serve as the basis for gender inequality. Listen to discourse on violence against women, for example. Unfortunate, but understandable uncontrollable male agression. Boys will be boys. I could site so many illustrations I would need to start a new blog, but here’s one recent egregious example (the case of the 8 teens in Austrailia who raped and beat a mentally delayed girl, videotaped it, sold it, and got setenced to THERAPY, not jail, for “positive sex”:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/callous-teens-escape-jail-for-sex-attack-film/2007/11/05/1194117959942.html
If our common sense assumptions included analytically disentangling sex and gender, maybe we could work at unravelling gender ineuqality in a meaningful way. To return to the VAW example, maybe we would look at what’s going wrong with masculinity and worry less about what’s wrong with men.
Rowdy bunch over here, Ezster, fun stuff! Thanks again for visiting!
PS On the books, JW, you must live in some fascinating feminist enclave if you are finding more quality books featuring girls. I have devoted hours upon hours upon hours to the quest for such materials and have even once been reduced to tears, so I’m a skeptic, but a skeptic that desparately wants to be wrong — so please, send your additions to me and I’ll add them.
I’ll go back to my own blog now.
dutchmarbel 11.26.07 at 9:14 am
There is no denying that society (books, peers, environment) has a hugh impact. Bringing a child up in a gender-neutral environment is not possible and that can be frustrating. But looking at the examples of gender-specific behaviour that people give can be enlightning too. Why would changing diapers be seen as typically female and building things as typically male? An anecdote of a girl changing diapers on trucks (as an example of mixed gender roles) is followed by someone telling about a boy playing at breastfeeding a doll. But breastfeeding *is* something only women can do, whilst chaning diapers (or bottle feeding) is something that both parents can (and should) do.
Acting as if there is no difference or as if certain behaviour is wrong will only confuse children. To me it feels as wrong as expecting certain behaviour because of gender differences. Girls can fight and have adventures and these days there are plenty of tv-series and films showing that. My oldest boy (I have three boys, 5, 7 and 9 yo) is crazy about ‘totally spies’ and he really wanted to have a secret diary – one you can only open with your lipstick with infrared. All ‘totally spies’ accessories are feminized – even the telescope and walkietalkie glasses are pink. Should we be happy with the feminine role models where girls can be spies and have adventures? Or should we loath the fact that it has to be that feminized? Should I buy my oldest his infrared lipstick? My youngest adores Dora – but all acessories are pink and he decided to adept to peer pressure on colours and discards all pink things.
They all like to dress up and look smart. We had my husbands birthday yesterday and they decided they wanted to wear their suits, because the occassion demanded festive clothes in their opinion. I like them caring about their looks, but I prefer them being fashion kings to them being fashion queens – and assuming that you can only follow fashion if you have a skirt of embroided flowers actually confirms gender stereotypes more imho.
I want them to be happy in their sex, comfortable with their gender, without feeling overly pressured into certain kinds of behaviour or into specific likings. I’d hate it if they would try to breastfeed their dolls (unless they played being a women, which happends too), because I think caring for small infants should be a gender-neutral trait. My boys never played much with dolls (our anatomically correct baby-boy doll never got the love he deserved). But they did have their turn in pushing the babycarts of our neighbour girl and when asked what they wanted to be when they were adult they all wanted to be a father (oldest addes that he also might like some job, to provide the money).
Girls can be as physically active as boys (I am the sporty person in our household and I actually had to convince them that basketball was not only for girls because they only saw me and my team play ;) ). When my boys tell me that boys are stronger than girls I don’t say that is not true. I just explain that in puberty males develop more muscles, so they are more likely to be stronger. But until puberty there is no difference and (as with everything) the individual may be differ from the group stereotype. Just like men are bigger than women, on average, but I’m taller than most of my (non-Dutch) husbands male friends.
I also agree with the person who said it is harder if you have boys. Most gender-neutral things were previously considered male and are now available for women. Though it is easier to find books with adventurous males as the main character you can find ‘paper bag princesses’ too. But there are not many books promoting the more feminine traits for men.
I don’t want gender-neutral kids. I want kids that are happy in their sex and in their gender, and feel that all options are available for them. Be agressive or not, caring or less so, understand who you are and what you like and try to build your likes and ambitions around that. Giving them options in toys helps and is worthwile. But the example we set, the role models they see on tv and in books, the approved behaviour in peer groups and the response to their own likes are more important.
I don’t want my boys to prefer barbies to action mens, I want them to have their action mans care for their kids, care for their clothes and cook for their wives ;)
magistra 11.26.07 at 10:04 am
jw – what exactly are you hoping for in non-sexist books for boys? From my rather out-dated knowledge of fiction for older children, I think you may be right that there isn’t much that explicitly has boys doing sterotypically ‘female’ activities. But there are quite a few authors who do have boy characters who aren’t would-be alpha-male. Some I remember are Mary O’Hara’s ‘My Friend Flicka’ books and the sequels, Rosemary Sutcliffe’s historical novels and K. M Peyton’s books.
For younger boys, there are several storybooks on boys and food/cooking (for example, Meredith Hooper, ‘Honey Biscuits’ and Vivian French’s Oliver books) and I suspect some of the many books for older siblings on having a new baby have boys helping with babycare. There’s also a picture book I’ve seen about a boy who wants to be an angel (whose title infuriatingly escapes me).
eudoxis 11.26.07 at 6:46 pm
“There is more variation within groups than between groups, but we reify that bianry, rewrite it, and then swear it’s just the way things are.”
This strikes me as a curious thing to say. It’s not true for sex or sex-linked traits nor for gender. The goal of offering genderless toys is to equalize the great gender differences between groups.
I bring this up, not to be disingenuous, but because “There is more variation within groups than between groups” is, too frequently, bandied about as a general truism. You may be referring to specific behavioral traits between the sexes, however, measurements between the sexes for any behavior cannot be disentangled from their causes. (Especially not by case reports.) It’s not at all bleeding obvious what a society with strictly neutral gender development would look like and to what extent between group differences would be dwarfed by individual differences.
mom 11.26.07 at 9:31 pm
Eudoxis – First of all, I’m not advoacting for gender neutrality, in fact, I’m pointing to it’s current impossibility (see the Lucal piece), I’m pointing to the social construction of masculinity and femininity and the bizarre invisibility of this scaffolding. My original post highlights this — giving a 1 year old all gendered gifts, without any indication from the child (all he currently indicates is when he’s hungry and tired). It hardly allows for a broad range of choices. So while gender neutrality may not be possible or even desirable, wouldn’t in be nice to have a little breathing room? A wider array of possibilities? The narrowness (9 vehicles vs. 8 babies) is amazing sometimes. See this older post for a comic illustration:
http://outside-the-toybox.com/pothers-not-pigeon-holing-your-kids-take-matters-into-your-own-hands-gender-stereotypes-on-sale-at-old-navy/2007/07/31/
As for differences between groups/within groups, I certainly think it’s true with gender. There are most definitely boys and girls who do not conform to circulating expectations (for which they sometimes pay a price), many expamples are peppered on this list. To list the characteristics that are always true for only one gender (and I do mean gender)…. well try. And yet, within each category we have tremendous variation, even if we see powerful patterns.
bitchphd 11.26.07 at 10:00 pm
it is much, much, much easier to find quality books for girls than it is for boys.
Not true, for two reasons.
1. There *are* no “books for girls” or “books for boys.” If a good book is a good book, then it is a good book. My son (7) reads books with female protagonists and books with male protagonists. We do not differentiate between “boys books” and “girls books” in this house–he has both “The Dangerous Book for Boys” and “The Daring Book for Girls,” at his own request. And he is quite capable of articulating why labelling these books as “for boys” or “for girls” is sexist.
2. Most of the classic kids’ books are “for boys” (by which you obviously mean, have boys as protagonists). And most of them are awesome books for kids of any sex or gender. Where the Wild Things Are? Richard Scarry? Dr. Seuss? Stuart Little? Harry Potter? Virtually all the books that win awards for illustration or writing or both?
It’s really important to give boys books with female protagonists. Certainly no parent with an ounce of sense would refuse to give girls books with female protagonists. Up until the kid starts to read on his or her own, you can even swap sex pronouns as you read, or assign them contrary to the text. I did.
Shandra 11.27.07 at 2:19 am
Here’s what I don’t get about the gender-preference-is-innate crowd: why worry, if so? All the gender-neutrality attempts won’t make any difference, in that case. Gender-neutrality is not about ONLY offering boys girls’s toys (ugh the language) or vice versa. It’s about offering a full range.
eudoxis 11.27.07 at 5:48 am
“So while gender neutrality may not be possible or even desirable, wouldn’t in be nice to have a little breathing room? A wider array of possibilities? The narrowness (9 vehicles vs. 8 babies) is amazing sometimes.”
I hope your experience is just an aberration. Though, I wonder if things have changed in the years since I had my children in the early 90’s. Our experience was vastly different.
dutchmarbel 11.27.07 at 6:36 am
Gender-neutrality is not about ONLY offering boys girls’s toys (ugh the language) or vice versa. It’s about offering a full range.
I think that it is because gender-neutral sounds limiting to me, it is as if people *only* want to give toys that have no specific gender attribute. I’d prefer an abundance of choice, so I’d be more inclined to give a lot of options and to try give examples of role-models (of both genders) that are less gender-stereotype.
Gender-neutral sounds like people who won’t give their little boys guns thinking it will stop them from playing violent games. I think that will just make the boys feel bad when they *do* participate in some ‘bad guys vs good guys shooting’.
jayann 11.27.07 at 10:51 am
This strikes me as a curious thing to say. It’s not true for sex or sex-linked traits nor for gender.
The literature on sex differences (sex-linked differences?) shows that they are few in number, that on the whole, mean differences are small, and, yes indeed, that ‘there is more variation within groups than between groups’**. (There’s an additional literature on cross-cultural variation that supports the latter point.)
nor for gender.
gender is more of a dichotomy, gender differences are greater than sex differences, you say? I would agree. Some physiologists have argued that sex is a continuum, gender, the dichotomy. Others think they go too far.
(**I can post many references including at least one by that raving social constructionist and denial of sex difference, Simon Baron Cohen, in my aid.)
jayann 11.27.07 at 10:54 am
‘denier of sex differences’. Sorry. And yes, I was joking. But I wasn’t joking about the implications or character of his work. (Cf his critique of Larry Summers.)
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