With Girls and Boys It’s Only a Matter of Toys

I am not surprised to find some opposition to Mrs. Betty Fonteno’s conclusion, from observing her twin grandchildren at play, that boys and girls instinctively favor different toys.

Fonteno reported that her 16-month-old grandson sought out balls to play with and his twin sister sought out dolls. Fonteno also protested what she called a deliberate switching of sex roles in children’s stories--for example, a story in which the father bakes a pie. (I had to confess that I had never baked one.)

Perhaps our copy editor put that column in the proper perspective when he or she wrote the headline: “A Half-Baked Theory on Sex Differences.”

Fonteno did receive some corroboration. Marion Kaelin writes that when her third son was born she brought home two dolls for the older boys, aged 4 and 2 1/2. They went mostly untouched until 2 1/2 years later, when she had a daughter. “They made a big hit with her. Every store we entered she ran for the dolls--no coaching needed.”

Of course the experiences of Fonteno and Kaelin hardly constitute scientific research.

“Seemingly lighthearted articles such as yours,” writes Pamela Dernham, RN, “do more to entrench rigid notions of sex-type behavior than all the pink and blue ribbons in the world.” (I don’t know that any comment has given me a greater sense of power.)

“The experience of one grandmother who baby-sits and notices differences between what toys her grandchildren choose,” she adds, “completely misses the point of ‘free to be you and me’ thought--it doesn’t matter if boys will more often choose the ball than the doll; some boys will choose the doll, and it should be their option to do so. . . .”

Margaret Morris notes that the subject has indeed been systematically researched: “Results suggest that what toys kids choose is powerfully influenced by socialization and that there has been a ‘drift’ over time, reflecting changes in cultural expectations regarding gender.

“Moreover,” she goes on, “much evidence indicates that the age from 18 months to three years is a ‘critical period,’ in the development of ‘core gender identity,’ that is, a time during which the child’s basic concept of self in relation to gender jells and becomes permanent or close to it.”

She suggests that Fonteno’s grandchildren were “precocious” in this respect, being only 16 months old, and that their precocity reflected their grandmother’s perception.

She does concede that there are some sex differences in development and interest that are widespread, persistent and consistent enough to suggest possible innate origins. “There are some. However such differences tend, generally, to be relatively small, to disappear entirely in some studies, and to be marked by considerable overlap across gender lines and by considerable individual variance.”

Which leaves us where?

Morris objects to my use of the term feminist doctrine in this paragraph: “I believe feminist doctrine holds that girls’ preferences for dolls and boys’ for balls are the result of adult indoctrination, just as baby girls are made to wear pink booties and boys blue.

“I know many men and women,” she says, “who also consider themselves feminists. We often do not agree with each other on many issues, including the opinion that you blithely ascribed to ‘doctrine.’ Such inaccuracy and oversimplification encourages confusion and prejudice and is unworthy of a writer for one of the country’s great newspapers.”

As a feminist, I would call that doctrine.

“Based on my 25 years of experience as a counselor at Cal Poly Pomona,” writes Ken Green, “I firmly believe that Betty Fonteno is right when she postulates that, from infancy, women and men reveal differences that are more a product of inheritance than a result of social conditioning.

“This would account for the tendency, often observed, for a little girl to reach for a doll with whom she immediately establishes a relationship, and for a little boy to reach for a toy, and to inspect it in a way that suggests he wants to know how it works.”

Green says he knows that women are as intelligent as men, yet they often turn toward home and family, while men continue to strive for mastery.

I wonder whether Morris would call that male chauvinist doctrine.

I have received several letters from men who bake pies, but I doubt that their numbers are statistically significant.