If they view any amount of advertising or interact with other children who do, for example, they could already have ideas about what is "appropriate" for them to like.
All I want to say is that there seems to be a stupid amount of aggression towards even the mere idea that statistically girls/boys might like something other than boys/girls do even if social conditioning were completely removed(which is a nonsensical idea in the first place, a child is a member of the society from the second they are born, they are not goldfish).
But on the other hand, lots of people have a tendency to think and say that certain things are "obviously true" based on what they are used to seeing in society, like that boys like cars and girls like dolls, and even start rationalizing it ("This is what is natural and right!") and even actively fight to maintain this "natural truth". They treat boys who like dolls and girls who like cars as deviants who need to be corrected.
And that's bullshit, even if there is a natural inclination towards trends for genders, that doesn't mean that's "natural law" and we ought to make sure to maintain and protect it.
Isn't it somewhat likely though? Kids are born with all of their genes and they can't do anything straight out of the womb. What has zero impact at that point is nurture though. Nurture therefore seems to have a huge influence, this somewhat downgrades genes to only push what's already been established by culture.
I don't think that's a safe assumption to make.
I agree, but the reality is we don't know. Also there's evidence that cultural norms do substantially shape our opportunities (e.g. Denmark vs Saudi Arabia) and we should be mindful of this always. This cuts both ways too — men in Scandinavia are much more likely to be involved in child rearing through choice, and this is something men in other cultures miss out on.
The real fallacy has always been people who think that if something can be proven to be nurture rather than nature, that means it's "naturally right" and should thus be encouraged, and deviancy from that norm "corrected".
It's totally okay for boys to play with dolls even if it turns out nature makes boys favor toy cars over dolls on average.
This seems absurdly out of touch with reality.
To give just one example, but I hope you'd agree there are literally millions if you think about it for a second: There was a recent Hollywood movie and documentary about the true story of a man who was beaten into a coma and permanently brain damaged for wearing the wrong kind of clothes for his gender. And that doesn't seem particularly unusual to me (it's not really the focus of the movie).
I can't think of anything close to that in reverse?
GP did not say anything about x > y. The post merely pointed out that some people like to link everything to social influence.
Yes, pi is not 3 but are people really unaware of the social signals they give off by being so outraged at the mistake given the context?
To extend this analogy far beyond what is wise, I'm not really sure there are that many people who think that pi is 3, probably mostly 3.1 or 3.2, which makes fixation on extreme outliers who might believe it's 3 extra odd.
This has changed over time too. Just look at lego adverts from the 70s https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/LEGO-81-768x...
They don't look like that now!
We dressed her in neutral cloths (second hand), we dont have a TV. Her mother does not wear juwlery or makeup. To us this appears innate.
Was your kid different? Your comment is not a lot to go off of but I get the sense you haven't raised a kid.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222673203_Sex_Diffe...
Pink was once for boys.
On the other hand it seems that infant chimps and rhesus monkeys play with gendered toys - https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/dec/20/chimps-play-...
It seems like nurture isn't naturally all that strong except in certain circumstances.
Oh, and she loves the police/ambulance/fire dept, but most of all, the garbage truck!
I don't think your child is interested in jewellery and fancy hats for the same reason as a grown up. My children of both genders enjoy that stuff too, to the point where my none of my wife's jewellery is in one piece.
One thing I've noticed is that I can't look at them without a cultural confirmation bias. So I've completely lost faith that anyone can judge these things without a stringent experimental method.
Which shows nothing. The natural allure might be for girls [in general] to go with pink, and the use of pink for boys (is/was it something to do with hunting?) might have been pure social conditioning.
Aside: Are their examples of paintings showing boys in pink? The only historical "pink" I know of is "hunting pinks" which are bright-red.
I imagine we're only talking "aristocratic boys", as red dyes were expensive and most boys through history will have had natural coloured clothing, I imagine.
My eldest boy used to adore his pink handbag, fwiw. That's a very limited data point, however.
Edit: found https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_sources_f... it does strike me these are selections to prove the point, ie poor statistics. Also there might be errors (blue for a boy, and pink for a boy - sounds most likely to be an error). Also that a lot of the pink for a boy quotes are for babies; seems like what mother's choose for babies is different to what children/juveniles/adults will choose for themselves.
Interesting though.
Not quite sure what your nope refers to, but you release that's not a reason. All you've done is shift the question from "why is pink for boys" to "why is red for boys" and still haven't countered any of my observations, particularly that it might be "pink" was for boys because of social conditioning in the past.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/
We shouldn't discount possible genetic influences on preferences.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4785908/
The preference for dolls is likely related to the role of females in childcare. Males are more the explorers and hunters. Women never explored nor hunted very much.
That still shows a gender imbalance, but I find it interesting that it always seems to be used to imply that girls don't like trucks, rather than boys don't like dolls as much.
(A similar rhetorical trick is used when talking about favorite colours. Apparently lots of people's kids just love pink and this tells them it's all genetic, yet if you survey women their favourite color is the same as men, blue. They just collectively prefer pink more than men relatively speaking)
We're in a progressive country where gender equality is good and most people are aware to not show bias and offer girls toy cars and stuff.
My takeaway from the past two years is: There is clear gender preference. Boys generally like cars, girls like dolls. Both like books and puzzles.
Of course there are exceptions but the stereotype is a stereotype for a reason.
EDIT: I looked into this more and could only find studies on 9 months old, which is potentially old enough to argue for socialization, although the studies obviously tried to control for that.