Same sex play preferences in children

I think that study is a pretty blunt tool to crack an extremely complex nut. There could be all sorts of demand characteristics in a study like this - and the children are aware of the artificial situation and perhaps are trying to give the 'right ' answer to researchers.

Anecdotally I haven't experienced any gendered selection in my DD's playmates. I have caught myself subconsciously steering Dd's towards playing with girls though.

I am not convinced by Cordelia Fine either. But her criticism of Baron Cohen's work is insightful and valuable in my humble opinion.

Didn't think you would LadyBlaBlah. Cheers for the hearsay though, always worth a laugh.

Good stuff minipie.

The bigger the social group gets, the more stark the divide becomes, since they are under pressure to choose their side for social reasons. They do not want to be left out of their social group. In small groups, this pressure is not so great and they play happily in mixed groups.

I think they are attracted to their own gender for social reasons. They are learning and developing their identity. Boys prefer playing with other boys, in order to learn and develop their social identity. It is the same for girls. Play is learning and the social interaction confirms and develops their identity. I think they instinctively know that there is a difference between the sexes, and they prefer to play with the sex that they are i.e. the ones that "look and act the same way as them".

"Thirty-six preschool children viewed pictures of other children playing and were asked to point to whom they wanted to play with."

So how could these pre-school children tell who the boys were and who the girls were?

Is it because the boys and girls had been dressed differently and had their hair cut differently? (must be since there are very few physical differences at that age which are visible when clothed)

If the boys and girls had been dressed differently and had their hair cut differently, just because of their gender, is it possible they might also have been brought up differently, just because of their gender?

And therefore they are not naturally attracted to children their own gender, but rather those who have been brought up to look and act the same way as them?

I rest my case

I find your fallibility extraordinarily hard to believe BoF :o

Would be interesting to know why though, wouldn't it? TBH I think children, if left to it, tend to gravitate towards other children with whom they have interests in common - reading, dancing, screaming competitions etc.

I don't have a feminist analysis for this phenomenon, but from what I understand, it is an age-related thing pre-puberty during which girls and boys separate before they begin to find each other interesting again when they are older. I believe there is cross-cultural research which backs this up, but as a non-academic I don't remember where it is.

I could be wrong, of course- it has happened before.

Cite it then. Otherwise it is just hearsay. Don't 'Oh please' me when you are spouting bollocks.

This would be the unlinked to research again LadyBlaBla? Or perhaps 12 year old studies of 36 children again?

Elephants my experience as a home educator echos what you say about small groups. I'm aware it's all anecdotal, and doesn't mean anything, but:

before school age my DD did show a slight preference for starting games with other girls, her and her friend's were more than happy to play in mixed groups too.

When her female friends started nursery or school their slight preference for playing with other girls seemed to hugely increase; whereas the friends who were also home educated stayed the same or actually started to show less preference for the same sex.

My DD is a totally 'girly girl' in lots of ways, but the other girls in her friendship group started to play in a way that was very different to the way my DD played and when in a group she'd actually start to seek out the boys (who played more like they had before) to play with.

I'd have definitely said it was the way the girls played that altered, to the extent that at a birthday party with a long term friend DD choose to play with the older and younger brothers of some of the girls rather than the group of girls invited to the party - it seemed like she just didn't get their 'play' anymore, or didn't find it fun maybe.

At the time I remember wondering if it was to do with expectations of the girls in a group environments? But then, like I said, my one experience isn't evidence and might not be the same as other people's experiences...

girl babies get talked to more than boy babies. This, for me, would account for their doing better at school in the very beginning: if they're ahead on language and have also been encouraged to sit and draw rather than run around this would give them a headstart at most things in the classroom.
Then the differences get entrenched and intensified as everyone goes around saying girls are better at stuff and they start believing it and living up to the stereotypes.

Had an interesting discussion with friends about this.

They tried to be fairly (I say fairly, not rigidly) gender neutral in their parenting and they have said that while their daughter is a 'tomboy' and their son is quite 'sensitive' - they fill so many gender stereotyps in other ways (this is obviously personal experience and in no way scientific).

The education thing bothers me about this too. I brought up Cordelia Fine (I have not read her book yet) during the course of the discussion, but no one could explain why boys are behind girls at school. In one case 8yo boys were, to a man, as it were, all behind the girls in Maths and the differences in grades were fairly astonishing.

My personal experience backs this up. Girls seem better at applying themselves to certain tasks than boys. Obv again, not at all scientific!

Perhaps there is an evolutionary theory here too...

Perhaps it's because they are coddled or treated with lesser expectations E&M because of the stereotype?

And YES to your previous comment.

And also IMO the big average differences between boys and girls level of readiness for reading/writing in the first years of primary school must have a part to play. The boys often seem much "younger" IYSWIM.

I think it's quite interesting that when children are in small groups (e.g. on a school trip, or at a birthday party, or when one family visits another) girls and boys tend to play together perfectly well. AFAIK it's only in the classroom environment that these differences really come out. Although I don't have kids yet myself, I have a lot of pictures with my three best friends from (tiny village) nursery school - 2 boys and a girl. But once you get to school age the groupings come in with a vengeance.

I'm really not sure it's about preferences for dolls/pink/sitting down being inbuilt though. More to do with boys (specifically) being actively discouraged from sitting still, talking, spending time doing things labelled "girly" etc. There's a huge heritage of rearing boys that could be encapsulated in the words "don't be a sissy" and I think this hasn't yet worn off TBH.

This is a study of 36 children. It means nothing. It is also 12 years old and research methods have moved on since then. www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED428903.pdf

Although, I do find Bing Nursery to be very interesting, and Dr. Alberta Siegel who set it up www.stanford.edu/dept/bingschool/aboutbing.html

I've looked for more work from Jenny Mireles Percer in this area and have found nothing.

It is supremely difficult to unpick the overlap between conditioning and biological differences isn't it. I hate the idea that it's been so hijacked by the likes of SB-C that we can't float biology as being as important in informing choices.

I need to think about this more - will come back to it.

I agree.
I'm quite comfortable with the idea that there MIGHT be biological differences but at the moment it's pretty difficult to see what they are because you can't remove conditioning which will have produced the same effects.

I think it is all but impossible for children to get away from adult preferences.

Even if I manage to raise my own children to play with any gender and with any toy in any way they choose, as soon as they come into contact with other children there will be learned gender assumptions at play.

'If me, as a women, comes out and says I think there may be some biological sex differences which may be responsible for behaviours, then somehow I am not on for the feminism cause............and I think that is because it looks like I am on the patriarch's side, but I am not, I would rather feminism dealt with everything truthfully than hide facts just because others (patriarchs) have twisted the truth for their own gain.'

this is an interesting point. I think part of the problem is that many of the biggest names in the area are very openly sexist in the stuff they write (eg when S B-C lists different jobs men and women ought to do based on the supposed massive differences in their brains, or some stuff Susan Pinker has written).