How babies perceive traditional gender roles

[mrsmuddlepies]

Really interesting to watch the BBC series, Children, their Wonderful World, particularly the section on how babies perceive traditional gendered roles.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06s80sp
The experiment was first carried out nearly twenty years ago. The babies in the study today, according to the programme, recognised both male and female parents as equally likely to carry out domestic chores and care for babies. A very significant change from twenty years ago. The only area which had not changed was the area of car maintenance which was still seen by the babies as associated with men.
From this small sample, there is an acknowledgement of real change in the roles played by males and females in the day to day lives of the babies. A very encouraging result.

That's a great and heartening bit of news. Thanks.

They were very young toddlers, which just showed the huge influences surrounding them. I was surprised at the result. What was also interesting was that both dolls were pretty similar except for the mummy doll had slightly longer and blond hair!

I was curious about the racial bias experiment. I didn't understand why they only used white babies from white areas. Surely they should have used babies of all races to see if they also chose the white woman. I think it's likely they might have as white blonde woman feature heavily in media advertising and I've read that young black girls will say white dolls are prettier than black dolls :( My dd (white with brown hair/eyes) has expressed sadness that she wasn't blue eyed and blonde haired

That experiment wasn't testing racial bias. It was looking at the extent to which babies are drawn to what is familiar. Black babies in the UK are probably well exposed to white women too, so if they had chosen the white woman I don't think it would necessarily be due to her blonde features.

It was looking at the extent to which babies are drawn to what is familiar.

Yes, I know that but it was using racial bias to prove it which is why I thought they needed to use boc (babies of colour?) to prove the point one way or another. If they went to the white woman they weren't going to someone who looks like themselves. And that just proves that children are taught to like white people.

If they went to an adult of colour then it proves the point they were trying to make.

Black babies in the UK are probably well exposed to white women too, so if they had chosen the white woman I don't think it would necessarily be due to her blonde features.

not just familiar though, like them so if they chose the white woman they haven't chosen someone like them.

I'm not confident your appraisal is correct. Black babies in the UK are well exposed to white women. White babies aren't well exposed to black women, so using black babies and replacing the Asian woman with a black woman wouldn't be an equivalent experiment. You'd have to use black babies from a predominantly black country which would introduce other confounding factors.

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just not confident you are right in the situation where black babies alrrady have a high exposure to people who aren't like them.

This is hardly an RCT, but DS’s (amazing) keyworkers in nursery were both black women (lived in a very diverse area of London), and when we moved house and he started a new nursery (in a much less diverse city) he immediately gravitated to the sole black nursery teacher (she commented on it). So some of it is definitely familiarity.

I'm not confident your appraisal is correct.
Black babies in the UK are well exposed to white women. White babies aren't well exposed to black women, so using black babies and replacing the Asian woman with a black woman wouldn't be an equivalent experiment.

The experiment if I remember correctly wasn't just about familiarity though, it was specifically about being predisposed to people who are like you though. This is what I am saying. If it was purely about familiarity, fair enough, although the black baby will still always be more familiar with black people as a baby's world is their family.

Don't you think it is impossible to do an experiment properly using racial bias with only white babies? You could easily be testing "looks like me" or "is all the presenters on bbc" or "Looks like all the dolls at nursery" White people aren't a default, it's like only using men in an experiment.

Different experiments.

I've just googled the show to double check the experiment was as I remembered it and found this.

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/nov/26/babies-their-wonderful-world-review-unscientific-meaningless-results

Presumably the hyperventilation caused explains the idiocy of not showing the experiment repeated with any children of colour. Assuming that the results were replicated, that might actually have driven home the point that the toddlers were going to the familiar rather than cleaving to a societal or systemic prejudice. If they didn’t replicate the results – well, that’s surely even more worth knowing. Still, the conclusion that was drawn – that the earlier and more diverse an environment children experience, the more familiar everything becomes – at least felt like a larger thought emanating.