Children's Reasoning regarding Sex-typed Toy Choices

Abstract

EISENBERG, NANCY; MURRAY, EDWARD; and HITE, TINA. Children's Reasoning regarding Sextyped Toy Choices. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1982, 53, 81-86. The purpose of the present study was to explore the meaning of children's choices in toy preference tasks and to determine if children's understanding of sex appropriateness of toys is an important conscious determinant of sex-typed object choices. 3and 4-year-old children were interviewed to determine which sex-typed toys they thought they themselves, another boy, and another girl would like and dislike, and were questioned about their reasoning for each choice. Further, when the children played with various toys during free play, they were questioned concerning their reasons. According to the data, the children used considerable amounts of sex-role-oriented thinking (11%55%) to justify their answers regarding other children's likes and dislikes. They used significantly less of this type of reasoning to justify decisions regarding their own toy preferences (especially their likes) in the test situation. Further, children seldom justify their actual toy choices during play with references to sex-role stereotypes. Rather, they tended to choose favorite toys for themselves (and others) based primarily on what the toy could do. Thus, tests of own toy preference and tests assessing children's knowledge of others' preferences may not be equivalent in meaning. Further, it is questionable that children's sex-typed preferences are the result of conscious attempts to act in accordance with sex-role stereotypes.