BoysToys

[SlowFJH]

We have two boys and a girl (all now teenagers). My daughter was never into dolls and never really liked pink. She was into arts and crafts and loves knitting and sowing. The boys were completely stereotypical (plastic and wooden swords, guns, cars, diggers and tractors, soldiers etc).

We have good feminist friends (with three boys) who banned violent toys for boys. They always gave us the cat's bum face when they visited ours because their boys used to absolutely love playing with my sons' swords and shields. When we went out it for a walk, every stick they found was a gun - despite their parents vocal disapproval.

My friend's boys (now all strapping teenage lads) joke about how their parents banned them from having the toys they always wanted.

We definitely saw differences in toy preferences very early on. My daughter had zero interest in wheeled toys (despite my efforts) but both boys were fascinated by them virtually from day one.

I know my experience is not scientific. But there were some studies several years ago using baby apes (who obviously had not been conditioned by human systems or been exposed to advertising etc). Baby male apes showed a clear preference for mechanical toys over plush toys.

www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-toys/

I'd love to hear others views on this topic... social conditioning versus biological predispositions.

OP, I think there are two questions to be asked here:

Firstly, is it true? Do boys and girls really prefer different toys? The study you cited is has since been widely criticised not least because it extrapolates from one study on monkeys to all human children. I seem to remember another study on monkeys which gleefully pointed out that the female monkeys chose cooking pots. But what use does a female monkey have with a cooking pot? When this was pointed out the scientists in question changed their tack to saying that the pots were red and reminded the female monkeys of baby faces. This is proof that even science falls prey to subjectivity.

Another cross-national study showed that when you remove the marketing message from toys the take up of them is more evenly distributed across gender.

Secondly, the question we need to ask is even if it were true that boys and girls have different toy preferences (which is not much more than a tendency at best) does it necessitate the force with with these differences are shoved down children's throats? Does it justify the kind of division you see in stores where one side is pink and looks-obsessed whilst the other is blue and full of adventure?

We'll never know really what the preferences are until we remove this intense socialisation. There was a documentary a while ago by Alice Roberts where adults were given what they thought to be a baby boy or a girl in a room of toys (they switched the genders) and without exception the adults gave the so-called boys' toys to those babies they thought were boys and the girls' toys to the pink babies. That intense socialisation needs to go regardless of innate differences.

As for the feminists with catsbum faces what really is so wrong with trying to steer your children away from guns? What is wrong with them trying to minimise violence natural or not? In the way that they see as best. No parent has all the answers and they don't deserve your judgement.

www.newscientist.com/article/dn25306-biology-doesnt-justify-gender-divide-for-toys/

AllMy... you're correct. These studies lack validity. They sure do make the innate gender believers happy though.

Using animals in purported studies of human behaviour and citing them as evidence of anything other than, on this day, these particular primates fancied doing X is problematic. It says nothing whatever about why they chose those things and little about humans if anything.

and what Theydont said.

Theydontknow
I don't think thEY extrapolated anything "on to all human children". It was a scientific obsevational study. They went to great lengths to urge caution against over-interpretation of the results.

It's interesting that the articleyou cite is not a scientific study itself but a critique of other scientific studies.

Testosterone has an almost immediate effect on human and animal behaviour. A bullock is less aggressive than a bull. Athletes (both male and female) who take anabolic steroids often report "roid rage".

Testosterone in humans (linked to aggression and competition for resources and mates) mean that males (throughout history) are more likely to be the ones who develop and use weapons and basic tools (e.g. clubs) to more complex tools (such as shaped stones, sharpened sticks and then much later - slings, bows and arrows and eventually the wheel). In all human systems and throughout history (including primitive societies today), such instruments are developed and used predominantly by men. I don't think this can be explained by social conditioning alone. There are biological differences at play.

I'm not saying that patriarchy and conditioning don't have a role. But biology, biochemistry, endocrinology and physiology, genetics etc - are largely (but not entirely) innate.

But what difference does that make to toys beyond liking sticks and guns? What about Lego? What about cars? And what kind of innateness leads girls to choose princess toys, make up and sparkly toys that have to do with looks? Girls didn't come out of the womb desiring to be pretty did they?

Look, after Brave there was a huge surge in girls wanting bows and arrows so much so they started producing them in pink. What that means is girls like that stuff but they need the catalyst of seeing someone just like them modelling it for them to think "wow I want to be like that too!".

Agreed Theydon't. What they see visually has a massive impact on children. Both my boys loved pink until they hit 3 and were told at pre-school that pink was for girls . They model the men and boys they see in films and on TVoo. It's really obvious. I'd love to be able to turn the tables for a couple of years and have pink and glittery stuff marketed for boys and see what would happen.

And I can't see what's wrong with the cats bum face for violent toys either? There should be way more of those faces. Male violence is a massive problem and it starts in childhood.

Scallops
The cat's bum face was describing her very obvious judgement of me and the fact that we allowed our children to play with the toys of their own choice. I actually laud my friends stance on pacifism. But unfortunately they weren't able to influence their little boys on this when it came to violent weapons.

As with most things both nature and nurture have an influence. My guess is that even if you could hypothetically somehow bring up 50 boys and girls without any exposure to tv, other adults on a controlled island

Sorry pressed post too soon
That the boys would predominantly take on roles associated with fighting, defence and competition. The girls would predominantly take on roles associated with nurturing .I think this is a function if basic biology and physiology.

Scallops
"I'd love to turn the tables .."
Toy shops that have experimented with getting rid of stereotypical boys sections and girls immediately suffer precipitous falls in revenue and annoyed parents as well as children for not being able to find what they're looking for.

Testosterone in humans (linked to aggression and competition for resources and mates) mean that males (throughout history) are more likely to be the ones who develop and use weapons and basic tools (e.g. clubs) to more complex tools (such as shaped stones, sharpened sticks and then much later - slings, bows and arrows and eventually the wheel).

Noooooooooo! Sorry OP, but statements like this - typically from the popular science end of evolutionary psychology - are just plain wrong. They do a disservice to both evolution and psychology as they are massively more bias conjecture than evidence.

Testosterone in humans brings about secondary sex characteristics and other physiological changes. However, there is no good evidence that it increases aggression or competitiveness or any other social behaviours. There are a few high-profile studies that have claimed such effects, and they get a disproportionate amount of attention in the media, blogs, gender punditry, etc. But the reality is that testosterone experiments tend to produce inconsistent results and many of the high profile studies don't replicate well (and so may well reflect a false positive).

And extrapolating those finding into the evolution of human social behaviour is unwarranted; just bad science. I know one particular branch of evolutionary psychology (the kooky cousin of the academic family...) does it all the time, and makes bite-sized evolutionary claims from very flaky data, but it really doesn't represent the evidence or the wider view of the field.

Rant over, honest. It just hit on one of my professional bugbears (I'm a scientist in a very closely related area; some of my colleagues work on this topic).

No no no no no Boys and girls aren't innately different, the monkey study is tiny and has been criticised loads as stated above, and everyone needs to read Cordelia Fine.

Geeka You would disagree that a castrated male animal is likely to be less aggressive than one with testicles?

My mother also banned guns. She had all girls.

So we hit each other with pokers instead.

Vashta
"Boys and girls aren't inately different"

That's a pretty bold statement. Can you prove it?

I think most people would agree that having the equipment to make testosterone and having the equipment to ovulate, gestate a baby, produce milk etc would constitute pretty major innate differences between the sexes.

Roid rage isn't really a fact either, lots of people who use steroids do so without any increase in aggression. From what I've read they generally magnify already existing personality traits.

If you castrate any male mammal before puberty, you are utterly changing the normal course of development of the body and brain. The difference between a castrated bullock and bull are more do do with their totally different physiologies (which genes were expressed or not over the course of development) than their differing levels of testosterone. Castrate an adult male bull and he will probably (but not always) stop chasing cows, but he won't necessarily be any more docile.

Castrated adult humans - and there are some cases - do not appear to have different levels of aggression or mood. Certainly nothing consistent.

Geeka
" There is no good evidence that testosterone increases aggression or competiveness "

Take a quick look at the "In the Doghouse" section of MN... about the behaviour of male dogs that haven't "been done" - especially when there is more than one dog around a bitch in heat.

As a scientist would you hypothesise no evidence of aggression or competitiveness?

SlowFJH. I'll take experimental evidence over anecdotes any day.

Geeka
Boys have mor testosterone than girls (even before puberty). More testosterone in any animal is associated with higher levels of aggression and competitiveness.

These differences have an influence on choice of play. Not the sole influence obviously but at least some influence nevertheless.

Geeka
Please share some experimental evidence. My "anecdotal" evidence includes the millenia of human history and animal husbandry. An animal with testicles will be more aggressive than one without.

Can you cite any scientific studies which show the opposite is true?

What happens with men who were castrated as young?
There used to be some who were traditionally harem guards and opera singers (the castrati). The castrati could sing higher notes that are now sung by women. I presume they were castrated very young.

Is there any evidence of what the lack of testosterone did to their aggression levels or preferences?

Any correlation between instances of violent crime being predominantly a male problem with most violence committed at life stages when they have the highest levels of testosterone?

Boys have mor testosterone than girls (even before puberty).

No, they don't. It was thought at one time that they did, and not just testosterone but a broad range of androgens, but more recent large-scale studies have found no differences.

There's even a point before puberty onset (at around 8yo, I think it was) where girls have higher androgen levels than boys. It reflects the fact that both boys and girls experience a rise in androgens at puberty, but girls reach this point before boys.