Parents did your kids play exclusively with gender neutral toys?

I tried to provide lots of gender neutral toys for my children when they were little and encouraged them to play with both boys and girls toys at mother and baby groups. We never had a television (purposely) when they were young but they still conformed to stereotype.

My personal feeling is that children should be allowed to choose from a variety of ‘gendered’ toys and let play with whichever the prefer. Of course this might be a bit difficult if you are the parent of a boy who plays with dolls, but that’s just human nature.

Gendered toy choice is an area on of my gender studies lecturers had a big problem with facing up to. She was convinced it was about socialisation; If only she had seen some of the research that has been done since then. One interesting paper found that monkeys showed gendered preferences for toys, suggesting that there is something innate about boys prefering guns and girls preferring dolls:
“..our finding that male and female vervet monkeys show similar preferences for these toys as boys and girls do, suggests that what makes a ‘boy toy’ and a ‘girl toy’ is more than just what society dictates”
Why would this be? “…the toys preferred by [male monkeys] – the ball and the car – are described as objects with the ability to be used actively and be propelled through space… [and] afford greater opportunities for rough and active play… On the other hand, females may have evolved preferences for object color”. I am sure they had a few boy and girl monkeys who chose atypically too.

In general people shouldn’t be forced to do things they are not inclined to, and children’s toys is a good example of this. Thus forcing them to choose even from only gender-neutral toys is restrictive, and I would suggest ia detrimental to their natural development. As adults we should be able to be mature enough to accept difference in others, and this applies to our children too.

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