Do girls really prefer to play with dolls?

[lcakethereforeIam]

Just happened across this fascinating article in the Telegraph

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/dolls-childhood-psychology-barbie-design-museum-london/

https://archive.ph/BatH4 girls can build and break walls too

The writer, Cat Bohannen, wrote Eve about evolution and the female body. It came in for criticism for being laced with genderwoo. I've not read it, the woo put me right off, but I'm struggling to understand how someone who wrote the above article could be remotely twaw.

I don't think anything in that article is remotely new. Pretty much every point has already been said by many feminists fairly consistently over the years - that children are strongly influenced from a very early age into 'girl things' and 'boy things' (some go as far as to say this happens in the womb). Gina Rippon focused on the plasticity of the brain.

This idea fits neatly into the stereotype that girls prefer to play with dolls, particularly baby dolls, since they are preparing, as any young she-mammal would, to perform the many roles of motherhood. If that all sounds slightly misogynist, you’re not wrong.

That bit made me laugh - why is that misogynist? Why is motherhood such a deeply repulsive concept? 😆

She seems focused on Barbie and uses it interchangeably with dolls, but Barbie is a relatively modern phenomenon. It is a part of American capitalism, cultural influence, middle-class aspirations and affluence that has spread around world, like jeans, sneakers and McDonalds. Dolls are a much, much older concept and have been a part of human history for millennia.

This thinking has even been extended to monkeys, testing whether adorable male baby macaques are somehow led by their penises, like a divining rod, towards a preference for cars over dolls.

I'll admit I'm not an intellectual titan. I'm not a scientist and I probably wouldn't score particularly high on any kind of IQ test.
However, am I the only one able to immediately spot a glaring flaw in this section of the article? Neither the author of the article not the scientists involved in these studies seem to have noticed it. Or at least it's not mentioned in the piece.

Assuming these macaques are not pets that venture out into modern society, monkeys do not know what a car is. They will never drive a car themselves nor see it on a regular basis in their environment. Children, on the hand, will develop an understanding and association with cars - they will see them when taken outside by their parents; they will also see adults driving cars. Therefore a toy car might elicit a deeper interest and fascination in human children than some completely random object that a child is unlikely to have encountered in their life.

It's also not mentioned what kind of doll was used. I'll assume it was a Barbie or something similar. The monkeys may understand it to be a human shaped object.
I find it bizarre that car and doll were chosen for the studies. These objects don't have much, if any, relevance to macaque society. They should have used a realistic baby macaque doll as the female coded toy. I don't know what male macaques would use. I think 'toys' are a human phenomenon, which means the study is kind of stupid to begin with.

I know my experience isn’t universal but I‘m also not sure how much toy choice says or doesn’t say about children.

I was the little girl that hated Barbie, Sindy, Girls World and Tiny Tears. The dolls I wanted to play with were called action figures (cos god forbid boys would admit they play with dolls too 🙄).

The reason I wanted to play with Action Man, Superman, Captain Kirk, Apollo & Starbuck was because those male characters were in comics or on television shows that I loved and, to my childhood eyes, were having more fun and adventure than the girl dolls who wore pretty outfits, or makeup, or ate paste and then wet their nappy.

I haven’t changed as an adult: I’m still watching scifi instead of Gossip Girl 🤓😬

But none of this 'atypical' behaviour for most girls of my generation made me any less of a woman. In fact, I think it helped to make me feminist from a young age because I was angry at being treated differently to the boys who got the toys they wanted whereas I was stuck with receiving girl toys that I hated but kept being given because I was a girl. I saw the unfairness and I kept seeing it as I grew up. I saw that boys were encouraged to consider adventure and self discovery but the toys given to me were supposed to help 'train' me to be a wife and mother.

I preferred Action Man because he came with so much better accessories. I particularly remember the jeep with a bazooka that fired rubber tipped projectiles. Didn't somehow make me a boy.

I never really played with dolls or barbie and my daughter hasn't either. Maybe it's genetic! My son still has loads of soft toys at 14. 😀

I have 3dds. Dd1 was into cars and trains and didn’t touch dolls but dtds played with dolls lots and occasionally still do despite being 12. I think the stereotypes are created from some fact but that doesn’t mean every girl does.

I preferred Action Man because he had fully articulated limbs and gripping hands so that he could be made to climb trees (twigs) or dangle from ropes. I wouldn't have said no to a girl doll with similar abilities, but we never seemed to find one.

Some do, some don't. Same with boys ime.
The 'home corner' type role play at school and the dress up sections are used by both our girls and boys.

Dd went through a couple of stages where she played with dolls and mini figures a lot. She always preferred role play/imagination type,play than construction, etc.

She had friends who were similar as well as friends who really weren't interested in dolls, etc.

If dolls or cars are considered gender less toys and it doesn’t matter if boys play with dolls or girls play with cars, why do we worry so much if girls do play with dolls? Is there something inferior about dolls that we should be embarrassed about, and something superior about boys toys that we should promote? It seems if a boy wants to play with a doll it’s genuine and should be encouraged, but if a girl wants to play with a doll she’s being forced into a stereotype and someone should get her a toy truck.

I do think there's a strong influence from parents. I never liked dolls or babies, my dd didn't either, much prefers animals. I tend to notice that the more stereotypically feminine looking mums tend to have girls who lean more towards dolls and babies. Saying that, there's always exceptions. But my dd has seen my apply make up maybe twice in her life, I wear about three pairs of trainers in rotation. So obviously she was going to be less inclined to get a doll to try make up on or change their outfits.

Probably some girls do prefer dolls, as do some boys.
There will be girls who love lego and cars best too.

I remember reading a study done with chimpanzees.
Toys were left around the forest and all babies played with the dolls but many more boys than girls played with the cars.

This type of research is very interesting. I really enjoy reading studies about child behaviour. Sticks were some of the first toys. I wonder what ancient boys and girls imagined and fashioned out of their sticks and other natural items?

My DC have the same toys

DD took the engines from the train set, gave them names, and put them to bed in the dolls house

DS took the dolls house, put it on the back of a toy truck and drove it off the table to see how it would land

Conclusion: my kids play on gender typical ways regardless of the materials offered. Luckily DD does want to be an engineer when she grows up but I suspect she will be very fussy about the colour of any wind turbines she designs.....

I was an absolute tomboy despite my mother's best attempts. I despised dolls, dresses, etc from being very young.

My daughter went to nursery at 11 months, she wanted pink everything because all the other girls did. She's still quite a bit more 'pink and sparkles' than I ever was. She has about twenty Barbie's and 5 baby dolls, all bought at her request.
She just getting into makeup, I wear it about twice a year.

Social expectations don't necessarily come from parents, just like no one ever teaches their children playground games, some things are passed on and influenced by slightly older / more opinionated children.

On the science: Surely we should be looking at whether male and female macaques play at different (macaque) roles rather than choosing cars and Barbie's?

I can only go by my micro study of having a boy and a girl. When DS was born we brought all of DD’s toys down from the loft (including dolls, tea set etc) for him to play with. DD likes a mix of things - she likes to wear dresses and jewellery but equally she enjoys dinosaurs and climbing/jumping type of activities. DS is only 1 but so far he’s been very drawn to cars (his first word), diggers, buses, dinosaurs. He hasn’t showed much interest in what would be called feminine toys although the choice is still on offer. I think it’s down to personality but girls are probably more likely to want to play with dolls and boys with trucks even if offered the other as well. However that doesn’t mean if you play with dolls you’re a girl etc

Dd liked her baby dolls when she was very little but to be fair she was bought a few baby dolls when she was born and ds1 played with them as well (he had a buggy and kitchen and t set already)

When she was about 5/6 she was more into these mini animal things that had hospitals etc and my little ponies than dolls (she didn’t really do the barbie thing)

I can't read the article as it's behind a paywall.

I had 3 sons. As toddlers, each had their favourite toys. Two of them had trains as their favourite. They loved setting up the tracks and running the trains around. Both are maths/science lads now they are young adults. My other son loved animals, he would set up a toy farm and put all the animals out. He is now a creative in the film industry.
They had a baby doll each. One of my sons carried his baby doll around and still has him under the bed. He is my gentlest boy. The other two had a passing interest but didn't live their babies as much. They had a dolls house, a castle, a buggy, toy cleaning stuff, a toy kitchen. They all got played with a bit but the toys above were clear favourites.

Then I had a daughter. She had access to the exact same toys as her elder brothers. She had trains and marble runs and construction toys modelled most strongly by her elder brothers. She was instead far more driven to copying me, much more actively interested in watching me cook etc, and her favorite toys by miles were Barbie type dolls and "princesses". She was not interested in the train set, and only a little interested in the farm animals. It was humans that interested her. She isn't grown up yet so I don't know what she will do, but she was different from a very early age, and it wasn't foisted upon her.

My dsis had a very similar experience. She was determined that girls only like dolls because they are forced to play that way. Her son was older and they didn't have any stereotypically girlie stuff. When they came to visit us, her daughter was just walking, and she found our baby dolls and walked around clutching one and loving it. My dsis was quite disappointed as she would have said her DD wasn't interested - well, it turned out she wasn't interested as she hadn't been given the chance. They bought her a doll when they went home and it became her favourite toy.

Oh and all my kids liked the early learning animals/dinosaurs and the play mats, they also liked the brio train sets and cars

as a child i had meccano and a dolls house and a bionic man and a train set 😀

Forgot the castle and the marble runs 🤔

Eye roll at ‘feminine’ choices being presented as lesser. Of course it’s limiting for girls only to be given dolls to play with. However, my 80s feminist mother presented me with cars, a train set, meccano… I mainly wanted to play with my stuffed animals (who were all female of course). My mum did succeed in giving me a lifelong aversion to all kinds of plastic dolls - Barbie or Action Man types - though, which DD also seems to share…

Was discussing this with DH the other day actually.

I think, that just like 'men are stronger' is an average, and some women will be stronger than some men, 'caring' is an average where generally women do more, building, men, etc.

But, that doesn't mean it you're further down a few of the scales than more of your sex, you become the other sex, or that there should be barriers based on any of it.

DH is an engineer and he despairs that so many of the women he trained with have ended up doing the 'people' side rather than the actual job. Also how many 'women in tech' YouTubers are... men.

I remember reading a study done with chimpanzees.
Toys were left around the forest and all babies played with the dolls but many more boys than girls played with the cars.

But that makes no sense as a scientific study because cars are not a thing in chimpanzee society. Unless the implication is that 'car' is genetically hardwired as a 'male toy' across species, which it isn't.
Cars are a modern human invention - what did human boys play with before then? Or did boys not exist until cars were invented? Lol

I can't read the article as it's behind a paywall.

@Toasticles there's also an archive link of the article you can use.

I recently came across a photo of me and other children at playschool, so aged 4ish, and noted that I was not the only girl with short bobbed hair, resented not having had tartan trews like some of the others (both sexes), and remembered that I was whatever gender prefers to do jigsaw puzzles.

Which was disapproved of by the nice ladies, who wanted me to be more sociable.

I quite liked dolls and used them as characters in all sorts of acted-out adventures (yes, action man's posable limbs were great, pity I wasn't allowed one because he was militaristic) - never 'nurtured' them. But lego and my model village and fuzzy felt were also great because they could be used to play out all sorts of narratives.

I had a doll, all I can remember of it was wanting to know how they eyes worked. My sister and I had male alter-egos that we adopted when playing (so we could have adventures). My eldest was mad about dinosaurs, she's now currently interested in F1, don't know where that came from. I don't have any boys. I just tried to get toys that they would find interesting.

The only thing I can remember about macaques was the population that's been studied for years. They were given supplementary food, I think to keep them around for the scientists to watch. First with sweet potatoes. A female learned to wash the sweet potatoes in salt water to remove sand, also possibly to season them. This behaviour was copied by the rest of the troop. She then learned to drop maize into the water to separate the grains (which floated and could be scooped up) from the sand (which sank). This also was learned by other members of the troop. Girl power!

@TheColourOutOfSpace - it could be that the car is mechanical. When I studied child development many years ago the research around the preferences for babies concluded that girl babies preferred human faces and boy babies preferred mechanical things. I caveat this by saying more recent studies may have reached other conclusions.

I don't think we have to ignore sex differences that may actually be there. If you think about chimps, maybe the females do play differently because they are the hardwired carers.

I think it's more important that differences aren't treated as unequal. Young girls may have a predisposition to playing with dolls. Of course that won't be the case for all of them. I bought both my DDs cars, trains and garages, trying to break the stereotype. They both preferred dolls 😁

I’m pretty sure the scientists involved weren’t expecting the macaques to enjoy playing with cars because of their cultural significance in human societies but because they are little platforms with round bits that turn when you push them along a surface. The mechanics of how the object moves is the interesting bit, not the cultural meaning of cars.
I got my son a baby doll and pushchair as a small toddler. He showed a passing interest in the doll but mostly would chuck it on the floor and push the pushchair around to watch how it moved….