Parents as play partners & the impact of gendered toys

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Parent-child play predicts social competence, later friendships, academic success, thus is an important area of study for developmental science (MacDonald & Parke, 1984; Lindsey et al., 1997). Successful “partners in play” incorporate teaching, engagement, and enjoyment using age-appropriate challenges with their children (Hassinger-Das et al., 2018; Majdandžić et al., 2016). Could some toys promote better quality play than others?
Parents play with sons and daughters differently, particularly in gendered contexts (Lindsey & Mize, 2001). They also provide children with gender-typed toys (Kollmayer et al., 2018), offering children different learning experiences. Feminine toys often prompt more nurturing behaviors (Li & Wong, 2016) while masculine toys are more likely to promote spatial skills (Blakemore & Centers, 2005). Additionally, mothers interact differently with children when playing with masculine or feminine toys (Coyle & Liben, 2018) by teaching more with cross-gender toys. We provided mothers and preschoolers with a gendered (Figure 1) castle block set. Do mothers respond to the color of the castle or envision either building task as masculine?
It may be that mothers serve as better play partners with feminine toys because such toys promote nurturing and may call on less building experience. However, given how characteristics of toys impact children’s comfort level and interest (Weisgram et al., 2014), perhaps gender incongruent toys put both children and mothers into an unfamiliar play zone, resulting in different quality of play. We hypothesize that congruent child gender and gendered toy will result in higher quality play interactions than incongruent child gender and gendered toy.
METHOD: Participants were 66 children (35 boys; Mage = 3.82, SD = .93) and their mothers in a toy play study. Dyads were randomly assigned to either a feminine or masculine castle to build and play with together. Play sessions were recorded and coded for parent engagement using the PICCOLO scheme (Roggman et al., 2013), scoring mothers on teaching, affection, encouragement, and responsiveness.
RESULTS: Data coding is ongoing. Preliminary analyses including 51 pairs revealed no differences in previous block play between boys and girls. A MANOVA that tested the quality of play interactions as a function of child gender and toy type revealed marginally significant effects of castle type on three PICCOLO subscales, such that mothers in the feminine castle condition demonstrated greater affection (p = 0.099), responsiveness (p = 0.064), and encouragement (p = 0.073) than those in the masculine castle condition, regardless of child gender (Figure 2). Moreover, parent teaching during play was not significantly different between castle conditions (p = .77) or child gender (p = 0.96).
DISCUSSION: These findings suggests that gendered toys do not impact parent teaching, but do impact encouragement, responsiveness, and affection. Surprisingly, boys and girls reported similar amounts of practice and interest in STEM play. It may be that these play partner differences stem from mothers’ inexperience with block play. Discussion will focus on mothers feeling more comfortable or “expert” in this feminine version of block play, thus resulting in higher quality play sessions for children with the pink castle.

Authors

• Martha Davis Straske, University of Maryland - College Park
  Presenting Author

• Megan Fulcher, washing
  Non-Presenting Author

• Meghan Kelley, Washington and Lee University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emily Moran, Washington and Lee University
  Non-Presenting Author