Without intending to, we recently ran an experiment on our 14-month-old daughter.

For the last month, Squish has been attending the Early Learning Centre my wife and I established in remote Indonesia.

A small facility with four staff caring for 12 children, the centre is well equipped with a huge range of toys — from trains, dolls and dress-ups, to books, cars and musical instruments.

Girls and Boys and Toys

During this time, it has been fascinating to observe which toys Elsa has gravitated towards. I often took the time to read to her in the little library, and I also tried to engage her in things I enjoyed when I was young, such as wooden trains and airplanes. But without doubt, what drew and held Squish’s attention each day more than anything else were the baby dolls and strollers. No one even needed to encourage her to pursue these activities.

Beyond the toys, what excited Elsa most about attending the ELC was the set of five-month-old twins attending the centre. On arrival each day, she would laugh and perform an excited jig as she ran up to greet the twin boys, and she spent much of her time interacting with them, even trying to help take care of them (though how helpful she actually was is up for debate!).

This little “experiment” has confirmed to me what I have long suspected to be true about gender: girls and boys are born with in-built predispositions towards different activities and equipped with unique sets of skills.

Elsa’s understanding of gender is rudimentary at best. Yes, she has a mum and a dad, and each of us perform different (though often overlapping) tasks in the home. But being barely a year old, she is far too young for anyone to have explained to her the differences between male and female and the unique roles each gender plays.

In short, Elsa is drawn to dolls, strollers and little babies — and less so to trains, cars and planes — for the simple fact that she is a girl.

Gender Differences

Writing for Live Science, health and science journalist Robin Nixon explains that even from infancy, males tend to excel at spatial skills like mental object rotation, angle orientation, and navigating by cardinal directions. She notes that this fact has been observed across many different cultures and nations, and even other species. By contrast, females are generally better at verbal fluency, memory for objects, and navigating using landmarks.

Dr Christian Jarrett, who edits the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest blog, agrees. In a BBC article entitled “Do Men and Women Really Have Different Personalities?”, he cited three different studies that affirmed that personality traits of males and females are innate, as follows.

In 2001, Costa, McCrae and Terracciano found that over 23,000 people from 26 cultures showed consistent gender differences, with women rating themselves higher in warmth, anxiety, and sensitivity, and men in assertiveness and openness.

A 2008 study by a separate team with 17,000 participants from 55 cultures found similar results, with women scoring higher in agreeableness, neuroticism and conscientiousness.

A follow-up study by McCrae saw 12,000 people rate the personalities of other people, not their own. It found the same patterns, suggesting these personality differences aren’t merely due to self-perception.

There is no doubt that social forces play some role in shaping the personalities of girls and boys, even from their youngest years. However, as noted by Dr Jarrett:

… all three large, cross-cultural studies by Costa, McCrae and others actually found men and women differed in average personality more in more developed and gender-egalitarian cultures, such as in Europe and America than in cultures in Asia and Africa where there is less gender equality… This seems to run against the idea that our personalities develop from cultural expectations around traditional gender roles.

It is worth adding that, even if young girls and boys are shaped by social factors like traditional gender roles, it doesn’t follow that those forces are bad. After all, for millennia, cultures across the world have agreed on the strengths of males and females, so maybe there’s some ancient wisdom worth holding onto.

Of course, none of this matters to Squish right now. She’s got bigger priorities — like feeding the twins and making sure her dolls are enjoying their afternoon stroll!

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Image courtesy of Pexels.