{"id":35906,"date":"2018-06-14T01:00:53","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T05:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35906"},"modified":"2018-05-24T08:58:12","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T12:58:12","slug":"qotd-the-gender-neutral-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/06\/14\/qotd-the-gender-neutral-child\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The gender-neutral child"},"content":{"rendered":"

The media is full of excited stories heralding the revolution in children\u2019s play. This recent headline in Time<\/em> is typical: \u201cThe Next Generation of Kids Will Play With Gender Neutral Toys<\/a>.\u201d But children<\/em> are not gender-neutral, and they famously resist efforts to make them so. If 40 percent of millennials think otherwise, that\u2019s probably because they haven\u2019t had kids yet.<\/p>\n

Parents and teachers should certainly expose their kids to a wide range of toys and play, and teach them to accept kids who enjoy gender non-conforming toys. When toy companies rigidly classify certain toys as girl-only or boy-only, that may create a stigma against those who cross the line. Overt signage is superfluous anyway. So let\u2019s hope other retailers follow Target\u2019s example.<\/p>\n

But the crusade promoted by the White House is not about tolerance for non-conformers. Its goal is to re-socialize the majority of gender-typical children toward gender neutrality. Jarret is right that it won\u2019t be easy. With few exceptions, children are powerfully drawn to sex-stereotyped play.<\/p>\n

Parents who read too much Judith Butler in college and view gender as fluid and malleable may be startled by the counterevidence their three-year-olds provide. The usually eloquent Julia Turner<\/a>, editor of Slate<\/em>, became tongue-tied a few weeks ago when she tried to explain a mysterious development at home: Her little twin sons were obsessed with wheeled objects \u2014 particularly cement mixers. Parenthood, she confessed, had \u201ccomplicated\u201d her worldview. Turner kept affirming her loyalty to the gender-is-a-social-construct school. But then, referring to her sons\u2019 insistent boyishness, she uttered four heretical words: \u201cThere\u2019s a there there\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed there is. And it takes a liberal arts degree not to see it. A 2012 cross-cultural study<\/a> on sex differences confirmed what most of us see: despite some exceptions, females tend to be more sensitive, esthetic, sentimental, intuitive, and tender-minded, while males tend to be more utilitarian, objective, unsentimental, and tough-minded.<\/p>\n

The female penchant for nurturing play and the male propensity for rough-and-tumble hold cross-culturally and even cross-species. Among our close relatives such as rhesus and vervet<\/a> monkeys, researchers have found that females play with dolls far more than do their brothers, who prefer balls and toy cars. It seems unlikely the monkeys are acting out a culturally manufactured gender binary. Something else is going on. Most scientists attribute typical male\/female differences to some yet-to-be understood combination of biology and culture.<\/p>\n

Christina Hoff Sommers, “Those Who Push For Toy Neutrality Don\u2019t Get Little Girls At All”, The Federalist<\/em><\/a>, 2016-09-11.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The media is full of excited stories heralding the revolution in children\u2019s play. This recent headline in Time is typical: \u201cThe Next Generation of Kids Will Play With Gender Neutral Toys.\u201d But children are not gender-neutral, and they famously resist efforts to make them so. If 40 percent of millennials think otherwise, that\u2019s probably because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[66,53,41],"tags":[374,254],"class_list":["post-35906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-children","tag-gender"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9l8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35907,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35906\/revisions\/35907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}