Poster #84 - Biases in Exposure to Gender-typical and Gender-atypical Toys in 9-month-old Infants

• In Event: Poster Session 10

Abstract

In the toy market, there are typically only two options: the boy toy aisle or the girl toy aisle. The former makes us think about cars and building sets, while the latter makes us think of dolls and kitchen sets. It’s been a long-held belief that these are the things boys and girls prefer, but the parents are the ones reinforcing that preference and buying gendered toys (Eisen et al., 2021.) However, there have been more recent movements to break this gender divide and make playing with a toy from either aisle more normalized (Fine & Rush, 2016.) In fact, the same building block toy is associated more with building when packaged differently “for boys” than “for girls” (Coyle & Liben, 2018.) This association might have implications for the gender gap in some STEM fields because toys marketed for girls do not develop an interest in things like math, spatial reasoning, or engineering. Further, toys marketed to boys lack the social and emotional qualities that toys like dolls can develop. To examine biases in toy exposure early in life, parents of 52 9-month-olds reported on how much their child was exposed to dolls (defined as human-shaped toys) or building toys (defined as blocks, Legos, etc.) in an average week. Results indicate that there is a significant difference (X^2 (3, N=52)=7.79, p= .051) in 9-month-olds in playing with dolls and/or building toys (see Figure 1.) Specifically, while most commonly both male (48%) and female (42%) 9-month-olds were exposed to both dolls and building toys, only female infants were exposed to dolls only (9%) and male infants were more likely than female infants to be exposed to only building toys (39% and 33%, respectively.) Focusing on the infants with exposure to both dolls and building toys, 65% of infants received equal exposure to the gender-typical and gender-atypical toys, 26% received more exposure to the gender-typical toy, and 9% received more exposure to the gender-atypical toy (see Figure 2.) These findings suggest that although gender biases in toys exist in infancy before the child has substantial autonomy of toy choice, a large number of infants are receiving equal exposure to gender-typical and atypical toys, at least in the context of dolls and building toys. This finding has implications for theories of the development of gender differences in spatial and social processing which can be facilitated by interacting with building toys and dolls, respectively. Future work should directly examine how the magnitude of exposure to building toys and dolls predicts spatial processing and social development in the subset of infants for whom gender biases in toys persist.

Authors

• Abby Jenson, University of Missouri- St. Louis
  Presenting Author

• Theresa Allison Moore, University of Missouri-Saint Louis

• Nicole E Shelley, University of Missouri - St. Louis

• Hannah White, University of Missouri - St. Louis