Gender and particularly gender shaping has become an increasingly hot topic and it is centred around the argument that our play and in fact the way we are encouraged to play help define our gender roles as do the expectations that are placed on us from an early age.

Boys do this, but don’t do that and girls do this but don’t do that.

The argument then carries that we then carry these worldviews and consequently our behaviours, established so early, into adulthood.

A simple illustration, which I conducted a study on a few years ago, would be to look at the design of Lego Sets. What sparked my interest in the topic was that an online news article asked whether Lego was in danger of setting our understanding of gender roles back to the 1970s.

For this experiment I simply asked a group of about 50 respondents that was to all intents and purposes 50/50 male and female, whether they thought that the picture from the front of each Lego Set that I presented to them with was designed for boys / girls or both.

The answers were definite and consistent regardless of gender. Most Lego Sets, City, Ninjago, Space or Star Wars (with one exception for Star Wars) were designated as being for boys. Classic Lego were defined as for girls or boys on the basis of the colour of the buckets they came in (pink and blue) and only Friends were clearly defined as for girls.

One Lego Set that was shown to the sample group featured a private aeroplane and limousine with a male pilot and male chauffer. It was almost missed by most that the executive in the set was a female. All defined the set as being for boys.

The point of the illustration is not to criticise Lego or get involved in the debate about gender stereotypes, but to show that on the whole, both boys and girls have tendencies for certain types of toys and certain types of play. What is not so clear is whether this is a conditioned or a natural proclivity.

My older son, who at the time of writing is fast approaching his third birthday, may just be a typical example of childhood behaviours.

We have tried not to shape his preferences for play, but without any doubt his toy cars of varying sizes are his favourite. It doesn’t matter whether he can pull them back and let them go, just push them around or even sit on them (if big enough). He just loves them. He also likes jigsaws and we are particularly proud of how he is doing because he is already completing sets with suggested age range of 4 to 5; in some cases a good two years older than he actually is. On the whole we buy him what he likes so he has more cars and puzzles than anything else.

While cars are his clear favourite, the puzzles do have some competition. A close third is a kitchen play set (cups / plates / a toaster / kettle etc). He loves playing at preparing food and making picnics for his cuddly reindeer and wolf (which he actually called “Fox”) and every evening during his bath he dutifully makes “coffee” for his mum by putting bathwater into a small plastic cup for her and leaving it on the side of the bath while I am bathing him.

If we have shown any bias in his play it is inadvertent and we really do follow what he likes. He is less than sure about some of the things we thought he would love and sometimes he catches us by surprise.

When visiting friends for about a week when he was 18 months old, they had a wooden train set and mini kitchen at home (mainly for their grandchildren) and it was the kitchen he was drawn to and he barely touched the train set. We have since got him his own train set and he barely touches it. Also after seeing how he played with the kitchen we decided to get him something along the same vein. This was what prompted us to get him the kitchen set with a lack of space in our home being the only reason we didn’t get him a mini kitchen like our friends have.

He loves it.

He also loves cleaning and we considered getting him a play set but he is just as good (if not better) with a real duster and vacuum cleaner so why use a play set when he can use the real thing?

His choice of books is eclectic and while he favours certain characters they are not “Boys Books / Girl’s Books”.

So, to all intents and purposes he behaves about 80% of the time in accordance what some might call gender expectations and especially with the cars. He tears around the flat and I swear he has the beating of Max Verstappen. He definitely leans more in the direction of being a “boy” doing boyish things with no conscious bias being put on him by us.

He is also caring, thoughtful and considerate. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his moments. Believe me he does.

This is from a forthcoming book on the topic of #metoo

Stay safe and stay well my friends.