BBC on gender stereotypes through toys and clothing 😲

[lcakethereforeIam]

Came across this artifact on YouTube!

I can see how that might happen, though I was always sporty and athletic as a child and I was the oldest child...with a much younger brother. My mother was a competitive runner in her youth, and both my daughter and granddaughter have been/are sporty too......Encouraging a wide range of sporting activities at primary school is important.....and some schools are far better at this than others. Also, of course, encouraging and practising things such as ball skills ( throwing/catching) from a very early age encourages good hand eye co-ordination and physical confidence. Bike riding. Swimming.

I went to an all girl secondary school, and found that sport was really strong in all girls's schools; although not all girls are necessarily sporty, of course.

Fathers often engage in a very physical way with children....throwing them, swinging them........and this can also encourage physical confidence and ability.

It is really difficult the whole nature nuture thing but as a community and culture we definitely reinforce stereotypes. As a child, I was the eldest of 6, my Dad taught me how to change oil on a car (aged 3 sat on side of car watching) use hammer and nails, Lego was our thing and I loved it it was my before 7am toy that I was allowed. Loved sandpits and diggers and anything that was mechanical. But I also loved dancing, painting, drawing, colour arty things, baking and so on...but so did the whole 6 kids we were three of each. THe main difference at the time was the boys did rugby. My youngest sister tried it but in those days it wasn't very inclusive. I was quite sporty but not in team type things for the most part - I loved Cricket though but we weren't allowed to play it at school, so we challenged the male teachers to a game and if we won we could have a cricket season. We did win which was quite funny but it was a catholic school and many of us had a handful of brothers and played in the garden at home so we weren't bad!!

I do recall once at a car boot a little boy desperate for a push chair and baby and the Dad literally grabbing him up snatching it off him and saying you are not having that its for girls "you don't want to be a puff" was so shocked even 15 yrs ago

It didn't occur to the dinosaur dad that maybe the boy might want some day to be a father, of course.
I see plenty of dads out on pushchair duty nowadays, and the style of many buggies is a bit more technical and robust looking nowadays...maybe this is/will be reflected in toys and erode that particular stereotype a bit?

Did once did a competition at a local private school.

we were looking at secondaries at the time and she said how much she’d like to go there- massive sports facilities, pool, extracurricular clubs, posters of those achieving county and international levels on the walls.

looked into it- boys school. Amazing sports scholarships that would have paid all the fees, and that dd would have qualified for as a nationally ranked junior.

bit more checking, they also have a partner girls school. Fab I thought.

the girls school was building only. No sports facilities. Part bursaries for arts and drama only. Nothing for sports.

i was shocked- as you say most girls schools I’d come across before do have very active sports teams. Although thinking about it the last few years many are reducing girls sports as they sell off the sports fields and facilities- girls are the first to go as they keep the boys.

Yes this here too! I have an older son, younger daughter. We've had a dollshouse, pram, play kitchen etc as well as cars, balls, ride ons since before my daughter was born. The dolls house and kitchen basically sat gathering dust, as did most of the dressing up. The pram was used occasionally as a walker, but if left to his own devices DS didn't go for stuffed toys, dolls, arty things or role play. He was all about building, destroying, cars, balls, things which moved.

DD however the first time she propelled herself across the floor it was to get to the dollshouse. She enjoys playing with balls, ride ons etc but seems to gravitate more naturally towards stickers, art stuff and role play with her doll or other toys.

I can't say I haven't subconsciously added to the bias in anyway, but they both have access to all the toys and seem to have natural affinities to particular ones.

That seems a not just a shame, but also very short-sighted. Especially at a time when women's sports are receiveing more coverage than ever

There are still quite a number of state single sex schools where I live; all of them church schools, though. Olympic Heptathlon medallist Katarina Johnson Thompson went to one of them, as did Tae Kwondo medallist Bianca Walkden.
Mind you, both of these women trained outside of school in 'non school' sports, and the ability to do that will depend on the availability of facilities in your local area.

Having said that, years ago in the 1970s my junior school had a playing field and we all did hurdles, long jump and high jump, and my secondary school did javelin too.

By 3 months of age boys and girls brains respond differently to just speech. Breast milk is very different for boys and girls because they both have different needs. There are differences in development in utero too. It's not nature vs nurture, it's nature and nurture.

We don't have different genes to code our brains in different ways for fun.

By 3 months of age boys and girls brains respond differently to just speech.

By which time they have had at least 3 months of being treated as a boy/girl.

Yes there are differences in physiology - if there weren't there would be no issue with mixed-sex sport. But in neurodevelopment and behaviour it is virtually impossible to separate out anything and say 'this is innate'. You'd need to find a difference within hours, or at most days, of birth - not 3 months later. The only one I know of with evidence that early is a very slight difference in amount of time looking at faces at a few days old. And from memory I don't think that was checked with adults blinded to the baby's sex, so the cause may have been differences in adult behaviour.

That's interesting. How does breast milk differ?

Boys take more from their mothers right from the start: larger placenta, larger average tongue size. The latter will affect suction, and may therefore affect milk production.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0889157522005075

www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/14/baby-boys-girls-sex-formula-milk

But when mothers fed female babies, their milk was less fatty and had more calcium, probably to support the faster growth of their skeletons. Mothers produced more milk overall for females, and over the course of their breast feeding, they received the same amount of fat as the males.
"The recipes for milk for sons and daughters may be different, and the difference may be greater depending on where the mother is at in her reproductive career," said Hinde.
"Boys and girls have different developmental trajectories, so if they are not getting what they need, their development will not be optimal."

There's lots of research on it. You can Google it.

There's lots of interest aspect of breast milk relating to epigenetics and how this is different in males and females. That's for another day though.