babble » blogs » Strollerderby
Strollerderby
Girls And Dolls: They Like Them, At Least Girl Chimps Do.
When nap time's over it's playtime!
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve had a conversation about boys and girls and the toys they choose to play with, I’d have enough money to buy myself an American Girl Doll and a matching pet. The conversation goes like this:
“Do you think the toy thing is nature or nurture?”
“Nature!”
“Me, too!”
And now there’s evidence from chimpanzees that at least when it comes to girls and dolls, it might be nature at work. Researchers from Harvard and Bates have found that a young girl chimpanzee will carry around sticks and treat it like a doll until she has children of her own. Young male chimpanzeess hardly care for sticks-as-dolls all.The researchers Sonya M. Kahlenberg and Richard W. Wrangham, published their work in the journal Current Biology. It’s the first evidence of gender-based toy choice in wild animals, not to mention the first evidence of doll play in wild animals. The work contributes to a growing body of research suggesting that children are born with play preferences and their choices probably don’t have much to do with socialization.
The researchers are quoted saying:
“In humans, there are robust sex differences in children’s toy play, and these are remarkably similar across cultures,” says Kahlenberg, a lecturer in biology at Bates who conducted the research as a postdoctoral researcher in Wrangham’s group at Harvard. “While socialization by elders and peers has been the primary explanation, our work suggests that biology may also have an important role to play in activity preferences.”
Earlier this week, Madeline wrote about a study out of Australia showing boys who breastfed did much better in school than their non-breastfed boy peers while the difference didn’t hold for girls who breastfed compared to their non-breastfed peers. Madeline is skeptical of the study, and rightly so, wondering what the researchers were looking to find in a gendered study like the breast feeding one. I’m not skeptical, though, of this study of chimps and dolls, though. In fact, I buy the gender difference hook, line and sinker.
When my boy/girl twins were 13-months-old, we went to my brother’s house for Thanksgiving. My brother has 3 girls and a boy, and in his basement were crates of toys separated by type: Blocks, trucks, dolls. The toys we had at our home had all been gifts and while we had stuffed animals, no one had (yet) given us a baby doll. Before that Thanksgiving, my daughter had never seen a doll. But when she walked into my brother’s basement (AKA toy heaven), she walked right over to the baby dolls, picked one up and started to cradle it. Just like that. My son, as always, played with the trucks.
So the chimps with their sticks for dolls? I’m just surprised no one’s noticed it before.
What about you? Do you think toy choice is nature or nurture?
Go Back To Strollerderby
0 Comments
[...] Strollerderby [...]
Girls And Dolls: They Like Them, At Least Girl Chimps Do. | Family Health Corner commented on Dec 27 10 at 4:37 ambaconsmom commented on Dec 24 10 at 2:13 pmSo all the girls who don’t like dolls are unnatural? Good to know.
Robin Aronson commented on Dec 24 10 at 3:57 pmUm, that’s not at all what I would say or, I think, the researchers would say. My read is that it’s simply more than peers that makes many – not all by any means -girls interested in dolls. I’d add that my daughter didn’t keep playing with dolls though she’s always glad to when they’re around.
jrmiss86 commented on Dec 24 10 at 6:52 pmI always like to tell the story of the two strollers. One year my daughter ended up with 2 doll strollers. So each of the kids had one to play with. What did they do you ask? Well my daughter immediately went and got a doll, put it gently in the stroller and calmly and quietly walked around our house pushing her doll, singing to her doll. You get the picture. My son RAN to his room, grabbed his stuffed dinosaur, SHOVED it into the stroller and proceeded to RUN Races around the house with the stroller on two wheels practically the whole time. Anybody who tells you that boys and girls are exactly the same, have never had one of each!!
MnMama commented on Dec 27 10 at 10:42 amMy little guy and his male friends like to cradle stuffed dogs, bears and babies. That said, they also like to ram the little shopping cart into walls and furniture with the stuffed animals and dolls inside – something none of his female friends have ever done at our house. I would say that this is more of a nature over nurture issue from my observations.
Deborah Siegel commented on Dec 27 10 at 1:44 pmThis stuff confounds me–both as a fellow mama of b/g twins (currently 14 mo old) and as a feminist writer. I’ve been semi-obsessed with this story since it came out last week. Here’s where I’m at:
The fact that the young female chimps in the study carried and treated sticks like infants definitely raises questions about the role of biology in play activity choice. Adult chimps use sticks for foraging or fighting. So the young females’ behavior, the researchers concluded, was not learned. Once the female chimps had their first offspring, they stopped carrying sticks. The new findings clearly linked juvenile play to adult behavior, since female chimpanzees, not males, carry infants more than 99 percent of the time.
Pretty convincing. But here’s the hitch: researchers hadn’t seen anything like this in other chimpanzee communities outside the Kibale National Park in Uganda, where this data was gathered, which raises the possibility, according to one of the researchers, that the Kibale chimps were copying a local behavioral tradition. “[T]his may be a lovely case of biological and social influences being intertwined,” concluded Wrangham.
My vote’s for intertwined. (I’ve started watching my own little chimps for signs of gender and writing about it at The Pink & Blue Diaries — http://deborahsiegel.tumblr.com — as I go…)
Leslie commented on Dec 27 10 at 2:09 pmNever seen a doll before? Really? No TV? No friends with dolls? I think it is a false dichotomy to being with, that there is no separating nature from nurture — environment starts in utero, and there is no such thing as not being influenced by some form of “nurture,” conscious or otherwise. By the way, my daughter’s favorite game with her barbies and one of her friends at age 4 or so was to “fly”the dolls around and crash them into each other. With other friends she used the more traditional methods of barbie play. Just one example of “nurture” in an under-considered context in these discussions. Meanwhile, my son competed with his best friend to find the biggest stick — I don’t think we need to spell that out — even though they were only about 3, but also pretended to breastfeed a baby doll. Maybe this is more about what we notice than what the kids actually do. . .
Robin Aronson commented on Dec 27 10 at 10:25 pm@Deborah: Intertwined is a lovely way to approach it. What isn’t? I’m going to check out your post. It’s so interesting that chimps elsewhere weren’t seen doing this.
@ Leslie: yes, she’d never sen a doll. My daughter didn’t watch any TV her first year, and, honestly, she played with kids at the playground, not at other kids’ homes. I don’t think we had a “playdate” her first year — life with twins is very very different that way than life with singletons. Crashing barbies into each other at 4 seems totally in the realm of expected girl behavior. I’m not suggesting, nor are the researchers, I think, that girls can’t be aggressive or boys nurturing. All of that can and does happen, but i also think not all of what we do is independent (or as independent as we’d like to think) from our life as an animal and its imperatives.
Add your take:
Note: Babble is a supportive, diverse community. We encourage a range of opinions,
but any unduly hostile comments will be removed.
Comments are delayed up to 15 minutes
Lori Garcia 
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
The Walt Disney Company supports Babble as a platform dedicated to honest, engaged, informed, intelligent and open conversation about parenting. However, the opinions expressed on this site are those of individual parents/writers and do not reflect the views of Disney. In addition, content provided on this site is for entertainment or informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or safety advice.
0