Same sex play preferences in children

[LadyBlaBlah]

This is a pretty universal phenomenon that boys like playing with boys, and girls like playing with girls.

(Obviously there are always the few boys that like playing with girls and vise versa but this is not the majority)

I am interested in feminist explanations of this. I haven't ever really read it being addressed.

Below is an abstract from one of the many experiments that tests this - it seems to account for gender stereotyping in some way.

Hmmm

My first thought is, if boys like to play with boys and girls with girls, then no biggie, as long as people don't start saying that it means xyz boys are like this and girls are like that and so women actually are dim and have to stay at home with babies while men are v clever and wonderful and get to do lots of other stuff and have all the money.

So that's my first thought

Looking at my children, 3.5 and 1.5. Our neighbours and my friends have male children a similar age to DD1 and she has always played with them, no problem. Her best friend is a boy.

So 1-1 I'm not sure about these findings.

In group situations - I think that the fact that girls and boys are aware that they are supposed to have different interests, and to be different, and to play differently, will impact on this. It's impossible to unpick nature from nurture. At DDs nursery they have encouraged her into a friendship group of girls. And the feedbacl from adults about groups of girls playing and groups of boys playing will be more positive than mixed groups. I am beginning to realise that loads of adults just love to see children conforming to stereotype, the children pick up on this.

Or maybe there is an innate reason that boys play with boys and girls with girls.

One last thought - the "play styles" that they used in the experiment were stereotypical - many boys play with dolls in a "nurturing" way and girls in a rougher way. So the experiment had stereotypical assumptions at its heart in the first place.

I think all children are different just like all adults are different. I think all adults and all children should be taken seriously and not herded into groups that create generalisations. If lots of boys seem to want to play with lots of boys, then who cares? Does it need to be noted?

Personally, I notice vast differences at some times between the way my DDs play compared to the way their male friends play. At other times I notice very many similarities. I think we are conditioned to notice the differences and use them to prop up the 'boys and girls are different' thing. When actually, I notice as vast differences between different girls, and different boys but there's no nice, neat, tidy generalising conclusion to draw from that.

I don't think it's that surprising really considering boys and girls are conditioned from birth to think they are different. (Read Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine if you want evidence of this.)

in fact in some ways it's amazing how many children resist the stereotyping.

(just had my 3 nephews here, one of whom hangs out mostly with girls. And dd played with them quite happily. At school her best friends are a girl and a boy.)

I am not sure Cordelia Fine offers a reasonable explanation for this. Gender segregation is pretty pervasive and children as young as 2 express a preference for playing with their own sex, and this is not matched by their toy preferences or method of play. Although I am not sure what Fine does explain in her book tbh - she questions science which is great but her own evidence for no sex differences are not ultimately convincing IMO. I have been fascinated by the duels between her and Baron Cohen about sex differences, and think he has some important points.

I used to be a straight conditioning type of person, I'm not so sure anymore TBH. THis sort of behaviour just leaves me with so many questions about whether social conditioning can be so pervasive. And if there are biological sex differences, what does this mean for feminism? (a question I ask myself, not necessarily a question for here)

I think I'm with you on the not-so-sure about conditioning thing any more, LadyBla. I know it has a huge effect (eg conditioned preference for pink in 3-year-old girls) in some areas but some things do seem to run deeper - boys and moving things, girls and dolls - and there are some plausible biological arguments I have heard for that.

The recent story about chimps using sticks as dolls was interesting (much more of this kind of play in female chimps, carried on for longer, until birth of first baby, while boys did it less and stopped at adolescence), though I expect that as usual the significance of the finding has been seized on with excessive glee in some quarters.

Fine does not say that there is evidence for no sex differences. She says that there is little good evidence for significant sex differences. Pretty important distinction between evidence against/lack of evidence for.

I think she wins the duels with Baron-Cohen hands down.

I would prefer to know the truth and there have been some seemingly interesting studies, yet as you say exexpat, you have to read them with the understanding that there may be/probably is author bias, and when they are repeated in the press, such 'facts' are always twisted and used for political gain.

It feels like because of this sometimes we don't get to discuss the important issues.

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.

I see that differently Seth. I see she picks apart science (rightly) in a quest to show that the evidence is flawed. B-C came back a few times and agreed that science with humans is never perfect test tube science, but just because of this you cannot discount all the findings of Psychology. I agree with him. I also happen to agree with him that the (non perfect) studies on hormones and behaviour cannot simply be dismissed.

I have tried very hard to get DD to play with boys and "boys" toys. The main problem was at toddler group all the children her age were girls, not boys, so she grew up playing with girls. At school she prefers playing with girls because the boys play too rough and playfight all the time.

I don't think this has anything to do with conditioning but personal preference. She is 10 now and says she just doesn't like boys. Some of it will be to do with her personality though as she is a gentle child and hates rough and tough playing.

'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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

And YES to your previous comment.

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...

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.

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...

Actually that observation is backed up in research. Children show gender segregation to a lesser extent in small groups and more segregation in large groups.

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

Oh please earwicga

If I posted a reference from 2009 would that count - is that classed as recent enough? It's such a lame argument to deny it because I haven't provided a 'decent' study. I didn't actually even reference the c & p above - it was cited simply an example of what studies find.

It is such a lame argument. If you are saying that gender segregation doesn't happen, fine, then you prove it, but I could cite lots of research that shows it is very much something that happens. I could go to any playground in the country and observe it n real life. I haven't found an explanation for it in any research - have you?

BTW - you say you like the Stanford University Bing studies - so I assume you know Bandura's main studies, for example, were done in 1963 and 1965 - does that make them less relevant? Oh and guess what, they were done using 36 boys and 36 girls - example sample size wouldn't you think