I grew up during a time when gendered toys dominated the store shelves of my local Toys “R” Us. In 1988, Mattel hit its 4th consecutive year of breaking over 1 billion in annual sales revenue from Barbie alone, and I became the proud owner of Barbie’s latest addition that year - Happy Holidays Barbie. Her multi-layered, red sequin chiffon dress draped her long and slender figure. Her blonde, lustrous hair was as extravagant as her ballroom gown. Happy Holidays Barbie lived in my large plastic toy box along with her friends Cool Times Barbie, Barbie Fashion Play, Barbie St. Tropez, My Little Ponies, and one Kirsten Larson doll, sold by the American Doll company as a pioneer girl from Minnesota born in the 19th century with blonde and unusually smooth hair.
I knew I did not look like any of my dolls. I was quite a muscular child, in the 20% percentile for height, and my hair was course, thick, and molasses color. On a daily basis, I awkwardly oscillated between the identity of a white, middle-class girl navigating the cultural and psychosocial context of my suburban private school and the identity of a multi-lingual Latina girl coming home to her primarily Spanish-speaking Guatemalan mother. The world around me looked very much like Cool Times Barbie, and I developed a deep interpersonal understanding of my society’s norms, lifestyles, and expectations very quickly.
As I recall these formative moments that shaped my working schemas of gender, sex, and cultural norms, I am reminded of their implicit and subconscious nature. I never recall my mother or father soliciting me to play with these dolls. Nor do I recall my caregivers encouraging me to play with gendered materials in the classroom. Somehow, though, these images, materials, and concepts were always available and ever present, implicitly shaping my own expectations of who I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to look like.
I remember a trip to Guatemala the summer before I started kindergarten and my mother had taken me to a hair salon for the first time. I was to get my first formal haircut before the start of the school year. I returned to America with a mod-inspired look. I was mortified. How could I start my first day of kindergarten, in a new school, with new peers and teachers, looking like Ringo? Much of that year, I was ridiculed by my peers with an absence of support from my teachers. Often, it is in the absence of something that we learn of its power. In this case, I learned of the power of beauty.
In The Stories Children Tell, developmental psychologist Susan Engell writes of the powerful nature of storytelling (both implicit and explicit) that we tell our children and the effect it has on the stories children tell about themselves. She writes, “If our memory, and the stories we tell about what we remember, make up our kingdom, what determines what kind of kingdom we each inhabit? How do the stories we tell, retell, and listen to contribute to our sense of who we each are?”
We all want to know who we are and how we came into our world. We all want to believe that we are recognized, that we are singular and special. And we each learn this, in part, through the stories we are told about ourselves (Engell, S., 1995). For example, I can recall the many instances my grandmother often commented on how pretty my outfit was. I concretized the term “pretty” within my inner narrative as something of value. Many other concepts and stories became valuable to me as a young girl - the value of a presentable appearance, politeness, and talent, to name a few.
It is surprising to me that after several decades of advancements in the field of developmental psychology and education we have seen substantive evidence in favor of gender-neutralized play experiences in early learning environments yet we seldom see the advancement of the dissemination of this research.
My aim in this article is not to reprimand, judge, or shame parents for condoning gendered toys in the home. My hope is to provide a condensed yet robust overview of the data highlighting the many benefits of providing gender-unbiased play experiences and to elucidate the specific developmental strengths that can be shaped by allowing children to have more open-ended experiences, particularly in the first six years of life.
In a study conducted in December of 2020, Sarah M. Coyne, Adam Rogers, Jane Shawcroft, and Jeffrey L. Hurst studied the effects of young children dressing up with Disney and Marvel costumes on gender-typing, prosocial behavior and perseverance. They explored the possibility that wearing gendered costumes can shape aspects of children’s gender development. Their findings are rooted in social cognitive theory which holds that gender development is a complex process shaped by modeling (learning by observing others), enactive experiences (learning from the outcomes of behavior), and direct tuition (verbal instruction regarding appropriate gender behavior). Wearing gendered costumes can provide children with gender-typed models (often media-based) that are often powerful, rewarded, and attractive. These costumes also allow them to enact and fantasize about salient gender roles through sociodramatic play and can evoke parent and peer responses to their gendered costumes (ex, “Oh, what a pretty princess you are!” or “Go change into something a boy would wear”). These modeling, enactive, and socialization experiences, whether overt or implicit, provide children with strong messages about traditional gender stereotypes that become internalized, cognitive representations.
The study found preschool-aged girls and boys who played with Disney costumes were more inclined to play with gender-designated toys and less inclined to play with toys often associated with the opposite sex. For example, girls who played with Disney costumes were less likely to play with blocks in the build area. Boys who wore Marvel costumes were less likely to play with dolls.
The study also found that girls who wore costumes were less likely to persevere through a challenging task. The finding suggests that close identification with princess culture, which for children often means the wearing of relevant costumes, could lower perseverance. This association may be due to the modeling and internalization of gendered characteristics or roles represented by the costume itself. For example, in traditional princess culture, there exists a surrounding perception and gendered characteristic of the princess as one who must be saved, is helpless, and cannot solve her own problems. It is also possible that wearing gendered costumes could increase the perceptual salience of gender for girls and evoke more passive behaviors consistent with feminine-typed socialization.
In addition to gendered costumes influencing gender development, toy preference, and perseverance, the study found that gendered costumes influenced a child’s prosocial behavior. Specifically, it found that boys wearing costumes associated with the female gender were more helpful to strangers whereas boys wearing Marvel costumes associated with the male gender were less likely to help others since their character roles are often associated with more aggression.
The educational implications of this study elucidate the need for encouraging girls and boys to explore various areas of the classroom including materials and spaces they may not reflexively gravitate towards based on their gendered preferences. Providing gender-neutral experiences in the classroom allows children to develop new skills and have novel learning experiences. Encouraging children to explore play experiences without the identities and roles of particular Disney, Marvel, or commercial characters might allow for a more authentic opportunity to develop perseverance, grit, and prosocial behavior.
A question parents often ask me is “So what do you say to a child who really loves to dress up as Cinderella? Do you take away her dress?” My answer is always framed as a question, “What can you do to support your child’s authentic identity?” I don’t think it’s an easy answer but there are certainly actionable steps we can take as parents and educators to provide less biased learning experiences to support our children’s sense of self, identity, values, and gender development.
Here is a helpful list of tips to get you started:
Don’t take your child shopping. Often children’s clothing stores are filled with highly gendered clothing isles. The boys clothes are on one side and the girls clothes are on the other side. These types of outings often carry a lot of unnecessary messaging directed towards your child, which you can easily avoid by simply leaving them at home.
Have the barbies and the blocks. Consider acquiring more gender-neutral play materials in your home and even toys associated with the opposite gender-type to encourage new skills, ways of thinking, and new ways of interacting with the world.
Fill your libraries with books about self-confidence and empowerment. Here are some of my favorite children’s books for preschoolers:
Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell
I Like Myself, Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell
Speak Up, Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell
Ladybug Girl by David Soman
Dress Like a Girl by Patricia Toht
Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress by Christine Baldacchino
Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love
Bodies are Cool by Tyler Seder
Luckily, through new environments in my young adult life, positive relationships, and strong role models I was able to relinquish previous gendered expectations of myself. Much of my experience both personally and professionally has helped to shape my approach to learning and how I parent my young daughter.
We are who we are by virtue of what we have actually experienced. But part of who we are is determined by what we imagine (Engell, S., 1995). If we can help shape our children’s world with broad, variable experiences untethered to societal expectations and norms, we will lead them to discover the unimaginably limitless possibilities of who they can become.
References:
Engel, S. (1995). The stories children tell: Making sense of the narratives of childhood. (pp. 183-204). W.H. Freeman and Company.
Coyne, S. M., Rogers, A., Shawcroft, J., & Hurst, J. L. (2021). Dressing up with Disney and make-believe with Marvel: The impact of gendered costumes on gender typing, prosocial behavior, and perseverance during early childhood. Sex Roles, 85, 301–312.
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