gender stereotypes from birth or before - studies

[catinasplashofsunshine]

I live in Germany and am studying. My pedagogy (as a college subject on a course for adults studying to work with children with special needs in the widest sense) teacher told us in no uncertain terms that the difference between play styles in girls and boys is inborn. I dispute this and believe that in babies and small children (obviously puberty is the game changer) personality and socialisation are relevant not biological sex.

Can anyone point me to studies I could casually refer to? Is the famous baby experiment just this BBC one

m.youtube.com/watch?v=nWu44AqF0iI# or ist there another it's based on?

I disagreed in the lesson and she simply told me I was wrong and studies have shown gender differences (by which she meant biological sex differences) in play styles are inborn.

[noeffingidea]

cat did you ask her what these studies are?
As far as I'm aware, newborn babies don't 'play' anyway, so I don't see how you'd be able to prove it was inborn.

[AssassinatedBeauty]

There's a study about very young babies showing a sex-based difference in what they looked at, I think it's mentioned in Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender but I'm not 100% certain. This is the one I think:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300000321

Your teacher should have been able to back up claims if she is so definite about being correct.

[catinasplashofsunshine]

She shut me down rather, and stupidly I didn't ask that. I was cross because she was feeding her opinion as fact to a room full of people 90% of whom are in their early 20s and lap up stereotypes sadly. I feel responsible for putting the other side but in grasping around for evidence in my head (that BBC clip was in my mind) and trying to be persuasive off the cuff in German I resorted to anecdote instead of the sensible option of asking which studies.

It's such a controversial view to pass off as proven fact imo. She had it as a planned point to make, it didn't come up coincidentally in class discussion. The topic isn't finished and I can't sit through her eliciting examples of how very small children are hard wired to play differently dependant on whether they have a penis or not again! Seriously there was nothing but people eagerly volunteering stories of how their baby nephew or niece followed stereotypes left right and centre, and there people are already working with children or vulnerable adults and will soon be qualified to call themselves professionals, and have massive influence.

[AssassinatedBeauty]

If you're working with education/early years professionals, it might be worth coming at it from a different angle. If there are small differences, in general, between baby boys and baby girls, is it not a failure to them all to focus on any small differences and to amplify them? Children need a rounded set of skills and playing to perceived strengths based on their sex is not the right approach. Areas of possible weakness need as much attention if not more. So the social and language skills of boys shouldn't be forgotten about, and the physical skills and spatial awareness (or similar examples) of girls shouldn't be seen as less important.

[HerFemaleness]

Re. The sciencedirect article. Humans have been around hundreds of thousands of years. Mechanical objects have only been around for a fraction of that time. What did boy babies look at before humans discovered how to maleness mechanical contraptions?

[catinasplashofsunshine]

Assassinated to be fair to the teacher, maybe she is aiming to make that point in follow up lessons, the point about the innate difference in play behaviour was the last one made in today's lesson.

I'm of the opinion that although of course personality plays a role, the general claim that boys and girls are predestined genetically to play differently when very young indeed is just nonsense. I find it blindingly obvious that parents, other family and caregivers and society in general respond positively to play behaviour or coincidental, unintended actions or movements even, which are expected of the sex the child is. I think everyone does it to a tiny degree, even those who try not to. I think it's obvious that we start creating gendered behaviour this way from the womb almost - not very active girl baby is gentle and calm, not very active boy baby is lazy.... and once in a childcare setting other children pass on their family socialisation and stereotypes...

I think whether one views differences as instead or as the product of socialisation does reflect in how children are further socialised in an educational setting.

I just wanted to quote a study at her instead of anecdote and opinion

[OldCrone]

I don't know if there are differences, but if there are, they are unlikely to be absolute - in other words if you took the results of tests from one baby at random, you would not be able to tell from its preferences whether it was a boy or a girl.

For example, in the study linked by AssassinatedBeauty, the results of one test (whether a child had a preference for looking at a face or a mobile), the results for boys were 25.0% face, 43.2% mobile and 31.8% no preference. For girls 36.2% face, 17.2% mobile and 46.6% no preference.

So if a baby preferred looking at a mobile, it is more likely to be a boy than a girl, but a fair number of girls also had this preference. If a baby preferred to look at a face or had no preference, it is more likely to be a girl, but you could not be anywhere near certain of this.

This is typical of most sex differences, and should never be used to say 'boys are like this and girls are like that'.

full text of article

[OldCrone]

Just to add, with only 102 babies in the study (44 boys, 58 girls), I'm not sure of the statistical significance of the results.

[ConstantlyCold]

I’m sure I remember a chimpanzee study (observations of their play).

Some young chimpanzees play by balancing rocks on their backs. It’s far for common in female chimps. The researchers seem to think they are pretending the rock is an infant.
Obviously it’s not exclusively female behaviour - just more common.

[HerFemaleness]

Maleness? My phone has gone MRA. * make

[TheLastMermaid]

Have a look at Seavey, Katz + Zalk 1975 'Baby X' experiment paper - I think that's the one your BBC clip is based on. (I can't view online video right now but it's where the adults interact with a baby believing it to be a particular sex but the baby might be either sex. The adults choose gender stereotypical toys, play in different ways, eg more roughly with 'boy' babies and address them differently - aren't you strong?!/ pretty?! Etc. suggesting that play style is strongly influenced by unconscious gender stereotyping from adult caregivers

[TheLastMermaid]

That should say, suggesting unconscious gender stereotyping might influence the way adult caregivers direct play style. Hard to say how the babies mught have played without the influence but even adulrs who think they're trying to be 'neutral' usr different terms and degrees of 'active' play with children based on what sex they believe the child to be.

[TheLastMermaid]

usr? = use

Shouldn't post when Im this tired!

[catinasplashofsunshine]

Thanks Thelastmermaid that's what I thought must exist!

It's over 40 years old, I wonder whether that's all there is out there...

[AssassinatedBeauty]

There's also this one about mothers estimating the physical abilities of their crawling babies - whether they can manage a slope or not:

pdfs.semanticscholar.org/597b/2daa8e2cb17dba9cb1806d4962e154189f9f.pdf

[QuarksandLeptons]

Hi OP,

If you have an hour or so I would suggest buying the kindle version of Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender. (There’s a free iPhone kindle app you can use if you don’t have a kindle) It is full of scientific studies that pretty firmly debunk the blue / pink brain theory.
She also goes through previous studies which have been used to try to show that girls / boys are innately predispositioned to gendered roles and she proves why they are inaccurate.
It’s quite an easy book to skim read and dip in and out of.
It will provide you with some great ammunition against the regressive views of your teacher.
Good luck!

[smithsinarazz]

I've said this before, but I do actually think there are some psychological differences between men and women - expressed in terms of tendencies rather than absolutes, as you say, @OldCrone. But that doesn't mean a) that a man with "female-type" traits would actually be a woman b) that everyone saying they're trans necessarily exhibits female-type psychology - the obvious example being sexual orientation, where most MtF transgender people fancy women - albeit not as high a proportion as men in general.

[CatONineTails]

I've seen a study which I'll try and find now, about how when the sex of an unborn baby is known it affects how they are spoken to and interacted with in utero. This shit literally begins before birth!

[SarahCarer]

This is where the use if the word "sexist" is really useful and needs to come back into play. Hoping there is a direct German translation. It is a word we've been hearing less and less. So a separate approach maybe outside of the class along these lines "as a woman I think that if any kind of sexist statement is made in connection with male and female children it must be supported by incontrovertible evidence that is made available for scrutiny and should not be stated without a caution against drawing further more sexist conclusions." That isn't well put but I'm tired and hoping you catch the meaning,

[OldCrone]

I agree with Sarah that this is sexism and needs to be called out. In any trait which is flippantly described as 'male' or 'female', there is a huge overlap between the sexes.

In the study with the newborn babies in my last post, it would have been more instructive to plot the results with 'time spent looking at a face' on one axis and 'time spent looking at a mobile' on the other. Or plot a distribution of the times spent looking at each item. The fact that they didn't do this indicates that either they didn't think of it (unlikely for anyone who analyses data), or it didn't support their argument (extremely likely).

[EvilEdna1]

I work with pregnant women and there is a definite difference in the way parents to be talk about their unborn baby if they know the sex. Boys are described as more active in the womb, bigger etc. It's all crap of course. They talk about what they are looking forward to and it's often dressing up baby girls and playing sport with the boys. Once the baby is born I have noticed a tendency to not like baby girls being described as big babies but seem to be pleased with big boys.....it's all very odd!

[catinasplashofsunshine]

Thanks everyone.

I don't have an iPhone or a Kindle *Quarks^ (I have an Android and a Tolino ) but to my shame I have just realised I have a paper version of that book, plus a Germain Greer one, which I ordered at least a year ago but which arrived when I was in the thick of course work and exams and work and kids and. I opened the delusions of gender one briefly, was put off by the style at first glance and then I put them... somewhere... I don't remember it as looking scannable in an hour but I will look for it again, I forgot all about it.

The teacher is pretty sexist generally, she thinks nothing of saying "typisch Männer" or "typisch Frauen" regularly so it's probably hopeless. I don't expect to change her but wanted to challenge her actually teaching instead gendered play behaviour as fact to the entire class, most of whom will swallow what she says whole and pass it along as gospel.

Germany (specifically Bavaria, where I live - I'm forever reminded other states are unrecognisably different) is in some ways deeply sexist and in others far less sexist than England. Children's clothing is far less gendered here, and weirdly I'd have said that children generally are - girls are just as likely as boys to be in a football club or up a tree or haring around the village on their bike, which are groundlessly stereotyped by many as "boys" play activities, and at secondary the same sports are offered (separately in some cases) to both sexes, no rounders for girls and cricket for boys or football for boys and netball for girls etc... However at school and kindergarten events there will still be official requests for "strong papas" to set up stalls and "kind mamas" to sell refreshments...

I'm often caught off guard because the sexism is different...