If you were to go into the room of a young child, you would immediately be able to identify if the room belonged to a boy or a girl. The reason for this is because we associate different items, such as toys, as being feminine or masculine. In the article "Social Interactions and Play Patterns of Parents and Toddlers with Feminine, Masculine, and Neutral Toys," there were three main questions that were addressed; they wanted to find out if parents encourage sex-typed toy play and discourage cross-sex play, what types of parent-child interactions are promoted by sex typed toys, and if fathers and mothers respond differently to sex-typed toys. The researchers expected that masculine and feminine stereotyped toys would elicit different patterns of play and interaction regardless of parent or child gender.
There were forty parent-child pairs selected; twenty mothers and twenty fathers, half of whom were observed with a daughter, the other half with a son. The children were from eighteen to twenty-three months in age. Birth records maintained by the University of Kansas Infant Study Center determined which families were recruited.
The parent-child pairs were each videotaped while playing with six different sets of toys for four minutes each in a small observation room. There were toys selected to represent feminine, masculine, and gender-neutral categories based on earlier studies. Parents were asked to play with toys in boxes labeled 1 through 6 for four minutes. The initial responses of parents opening the toy boxes were of interest because parents did not know the contents of the toy boxes until they opened each one. Three raters, two males and one female, watched the videotapes edited to display only the parents" initial responses. The level of involvement with the target toys was coded continuously for both parents and children. Physical proximity between parent and child was scored continuously, and finally, parental verbal behaviors were scored.
