The Relationships of Parental Expectations and Preschool Children's Verbal Sex Typing to Their Sex-Typed Toy Play Behavior

• Published in: Child development 1980-03, Vol.51 (1), p.266-270
• Main Authors: Schau, Candace Garrett, Kahn, Lynne, Diepold, John H., Cherry, Frances
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adults; Age; Brief Reports; Children; Femininity; Masculinity; Parents; Preschool children; School age children; Sons; Toys
• ISSN: 0009-3920; 1467-8624
• DOI: 10.2307/1129620

Parents of 52 preschool-age children predicted how frequently their children would play with each of 12 adult-defined sex-typed and neutral toys. Each child played 10 min with the toys; 32 of the children verbally rated the toys as to sex appropriateness. Children sex-typed the toy groups in the expected cultural directions but with lower agreement than adults; younger children assigned fewer toys exclusively to the opposite sex than did older children. Girls played longer with neutral and equally long with feminine and masculine toys; boys played longer with masculine and equally long with feminine and neutral toys. With increasing age, both sexes played longer with feminine toys; no age differences were found for masculine and neutral toys. The children were highly concordant in their verbal sex typing and play; younger children played with a smaller proportion of self-defined sex-inappropriate toys, but there were no age differences in proportion of playtime spent with these toys. Parents expected their children to play with culturally defined sex-appropriate toys, but in general their predictions were not accurate.