BOYS' TOYS

Later that year, when David came into the office with Jessica, I handed him a lavender toy car from an assortment I had in a shoe-box. He frowned as he said, "That's a girl car." Tossing the car back into the box, he grabbed the bright red car with black racing stripes, saying, "This is a boy one!" Researchers have found that boys and girls both prefer the toys of their own sex, but girls will play with boys' toys, while boys--by the age of four--reject girl toys and even toys that are "girl colors" like pink.

I didn't know this when my own son was born, so I gave him lots of unisex toys. When he was three and a half years old, in addition to buying him one of the action combat figures he was begging for, I bought him a Barbie doll. I thought it would be good for him to have some practice playing out nonaggressive, cooperative scenarios. I was delighted by how eagerly he ripped open the box. Once he freed her from the packaging, he grabbed her around the torso and thrust her long legs into midair like a sword, shouting, "Eeeehhhg, take that!" toward some imaginary enemy. I was a little taken aback, as I was part of the generation of second-wave feminists who had decided that we were going to raise emotionally sensitive boys who weren't aggressive or obsessed with weapons and competition. Giving our children toys for both genders was part of our new child-rearing plan. We prided ourselves on how our future daughters-in-law would thank us for the emotionally sensitive men we raised. Until we had our own sons, this sounded perfectly plausible.

Scientists have since learned that no matter how much we adults try to influence our children, girls will play house and dress up their dollies, and boys will race around fighting imaginary foes, building and destroying, and seeking new thrills. Regardless of how we think children should play, boys are more interested in competitive games, and girls are more interested in cooperative games. This innate brain wiring is apparently different enough that behavioral studies show that boys spend 65 percent of their free time in competitive games, while girls spend only 35 percent. And when girls are playing, they take turns twenty times more often than boys.

It is commonly said that "boys will be boys," and it's true. My son didn't turn Barbie into a sword because his environment promoted the use of weapons. He was practicing the instincts of his male brain to aggressively protect and defend. Those stereotypically girl toys I gave him in his first few years of life did not make his brain more feminine any more than giving boy toys to a girl would make her more masculine.
I later found out that my son had plenty of masculine company when it came to turning Barbie into a weapon. In an Irish nursery school, researchers observed that boys raided the girls' kitchen toys and even unscrewed the faucet handles in the miniature sink to use as toy guns. In another nursery-school study, researchers found that preschool boys were six times more likely than girls to use domestic objects as equipment or weapons. They used a spoon as a flashlight to explore a make-believe cave, turned spatulas into swords to battle the "bad guys," and used beans as bullets.

The next time I talked to Jessica, she told me David came home from kindergarten one day with a black eye. His teacher said he had called Craig a sissy for playing with the girls, and Craig hauled off and hit him. Jessica said, "I felt so bad for him that I took him out for ice cream, and out of the blue, he turned to me and said, 'I love you, Mommy. I'm gonna marry you when I grow up.' Seeing him with that black eye and hearing him say that to me just about broke my heart. Why would his best friend hit him like that, just for calling him a name?"

I told Jessica that by the time a boy is just three and a half, the greatest insult is being called a girl. Boys tease and reject other boys who like girls' games and toys. And after the age of four, if a boy plays with girls, the other boys soon reject him. Studies show that beginning in the toddler years, boys develop a shared understanding about which toys, games, and activities are "not male" and must therefore be avoided. Boys applaud their male playmates for male-typical behavior while they condemn everything else as "girly."

Curiosity about the origins of boys' strong preference for masculine toys led researchers to explore this further with young rhesus monkeys. Because monkeys are not gender socialized as to which toys are masculine or feminine, they made good subjects for this study. Researchers gave the young male and female monkeys a choice between a wheeled vehicle, the "masculine" toy, and a plush doll figure, the "feminine" toy. The males almost exclusively spent time playing with the wheeled toy. But the females played equal amounts of time with the doll and the wheeled toy. The scientists concluded that gender-specific toy preferences have roots in the male brain circuitry in both boys and male monkeys. And there is further evidence that this toy preference has its origins in fetal brain development. In human girls, a prenatal exposure to high testosterone, due to a disorder called CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia), has been found to influence later toy preferences. By the time these CAH girls are three or four, they prefer boy-typical toys more than other girls do.

Scientists believe that boys' toys reflect their preference for using big muscle groups when they play. A related preference for action shows up even in art class. Researchers found that elementary-school boys preferred to draw action scenes like car and plane crashes. Nearly all their drawings captured a dynamic movement, and they used only a few colors. The girls in the study drew people, pets, flowers, and trees and used many more colors than the boys did.

David not only liked drawing action scenes and playing with boy toys, but by the age of five, his favorite board game was Chutes and Ladders. He would do anything to win, including cheat. He'd slyly move his marker the wrong number of spaces so he could climb up a ladder or avoid having to slide down a chute. And he was devastated when he lost. Jessica said, "Every time Craig and David play this game, they end up fighting." I could relate. When my son was in kindergarten, we had to remove all the win-lose board games and put them in the closet for a while. Victory is critically important to boys because, for them, play's real purpose is to determine social ranking. At an early age, the male brain is raring for play-fighting, defending turf, and competing. Losing is unacceptable. To a young male brain, the victory cry is everything.