Lez Get Real - a gay girl's view on the world

04/16/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
A new study out of England is showing that toy preferences may be determined by a child’s gender. What the study misses in its conclusions is that there may be a dual issue occurring here. According to the study, boys and young as nine months chose active moving toys over what would normally be seen as girl’s toys. Girls chose toys that were more about nurturing such as dolls and stuffed animals. This is according to study author Sara Amalie O’Toole Thommessen. She stated “The boys always preferred the toys that go or move, and the girls preferred toys that promote nurturing and facial features.”

Walter Gilliam, director of the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University stated rather directly “One of the things we’ve learned about babies over the many years we’ve been studying them is that they are amazing sponges and learn an awful lot in those nine months.” Basically, it is too soon to rule out whether or not this is ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’. This vein of research was popular in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but largely came to an end a while ago.

Gilliam stated “Even if your boy prefers playing with a truck, make sure you talk to him and teach him about nurturing. Even if a girl is playing with a doll, every once in a while throw her a ball or take her on a run. Expose them to all the different possibilities, and then let them choose.”

One thing that did come out of this study which is of importance to the LGBT Community is that the change in familial roles between men and women does not seem to have had an impact upon whether or not the boys went for the cars and the girls for the dolls. This appears to have occurred despite the child coming from a household where the father did housework and the mother had a high paying job outside the house. It seems that the gender impact for a family where traditional gender and sex roles are not applied is minimal and may amount to little more than a tiny shift in how the children see what is appropriate. In other words, a boy growing up in a household with a father who does housework may find that they do not mind contributing to the household in the long run.

There is no information as to whether or not any gay or lesbian families were involved in the study directly. It is interesting that the study does have a potential to show that no matter what the make up or sex/gender roles of the parents, the children still have a male or female identity.

What may be going on, and this is not something concluded in this study, is that the gender of the boys and girls is already set and their parents have socialized them into preferring specific toys. The set up of the test was not unlike one Native American tribe’s ceremony where they would have an infant choose between items that were associated with male or female activities. If the infant- no matter what sex they were- chose the male objects, they were raised as men, and if they chose the female objects, they were raised as women (Changing Ones, Will Rosco).

Many transsexuals see themselves as being members of the opposite gender/sex long before they hit puberty. Indeed, it is not uncommon for them to know as young as five or even before that. Gender and gender identity are concepts which are hardwired into our brains from an early age. Oddly enough, I can still remember the doll my parents gave me when I was too young to really remember how old I was. I was probably three or four. I came from parents who were willing to accept that I did not have to be bound to the gender stereotypes that were prevalent at the time.

What this study could show, ultimately, is that transsexuality is definitely hardwired into the brain as many transpeople have maintained, and that it is something that is not due to the parent’s socialization.

Even 9-Month-Olds Choose ‘Gender-Specific’ Toys

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• Even 9-Month-Olds Choose ‘Gender-Specific’ Toys (nlm.nih.gov)