Mommy mood swings : boys and cars, perpetuating a stereotype?
He used to call them gree, may be because I used to call 'car - gadhi ' while we went on stroller rides. His favourite book was an atlas , with vehicles like planes and cars . Till 18 months he had no screen time, and on his 18 month he was crying inconsolably in the car when his uncle / maamu showed him a video of wheels on the bus. That moment , sitting in the car, driving from Palvolem to Margao, my son fell head over heels in love with the rhyme. We have heard it for 6 months straight now, everyday all day sometimes. For a vehicularly challenged mom it is amazing and amusing for me to see him tossing in his sleep saying ' purple car, red double decker bus' and no one has ever said " green garbage truck" with such love and affection.
I have always been very vocal about Gender equality and
while I grew up never being denied or forced to take up on any particular
gender activity, being pregnant had really got me thinking about genders.
It all started with a relative asking me to get a ‘sex
determination ‘ test. I would have loved to know if I had a boy or a girl, just
so that I could refer to him/her, rather than an ‘IT’. An emotion which I
realise a lot of parent around the world share. We don’t want to know the sex of the child for anything other than to
feel closer to the baby. We ofcourse did not find out about the sex of the
child, since it is illegal in India, but it did lead to my first blog post as
‘MOMMY MOOD SWINGS , about a mothers love.
As the pregnancy progressed I doubted my ability to raise a
boy. Why? Because I am a girl, and I didn’t know how boys react. Also bringing
up a well rounded boy in a patriarchial society is difficult. I wanted my boy,
if I had a boy, to be a caring and gentle and a ‘good boy’, would society allow
that? And these were again questions which were not only being raised by me,
but by other first time moms, even on TV shows like Girls, and Gilmore girls.
And that led me to my next blog post as a pregnant mom under Mommy mood swings,
which you can read HERE
By now I have painted a picture of who I am : A feminist,
who even if she had a boy, would love it for all her worth, but be sure to
raise him equal to how she would raise any child, without the privileges that
his gender provided him in society.
And then my son was born.
And as he turned two this week, our house is filled with
cars, trucks, buses of every shape and colour.
His waking words, are purple double decker bus, and he goes
to sleep mumbling green garbage truck.
I was amazed.
My husband quipped in “ Boys will be boys.”
And good natured friends , helped me understand this
phenomenon, with “its genetics.”
But I needed to dig deeper, so I took the deep dive into researching
why my son loves cars, buses and trucks.
It seems it is not as
simple as Genetics.
Genetics, or the XY chromosome, only helps in identifying genetic sex, this in turn leads to the
genetic organ formations. But ‘ Gender
Identity’ or which sex the child identifies themselves with is because of
the internal levels of testosterone
in there prenatal life in the womb, as well as the amount of testosterone after
birth.
Two independent studies in 2002, performed by Gerianne M.
Alexander and Melissa Hines, and in 2008, performed by Janice M. Hassett, Erin
R. Siebert, and Kim Wallen, showed preferences to toys based on gender using
first vervet then the rhesus monkeys. Male
monkeys favored toys considered to be for boys (ball, car), while female
monkeys were drawn to stereotypical girl toys (baby doll).
The fascinating thing about the studies is that the subjects
had no external pressure to play with
one toy over the other. They were not under any societal pressure or influence
to choose a toy based on what they should because of gender norms and roles.
Researchers suggest that testosterone is the reason.
Children, generally boys, with higher levels of testosterone are drawn to toys
labeled as male-typical toys.
By now I realised that my sons affinity towards cars was not
just because he was bormn a boy, but also because of the internal hormonal
balances which helped him identify as one. And the other thing was that I nor
society had had much say in the matter. My son sees me drive a car, my
neighbour drives her kids and my son to the park, so I doubt he considers cars
as a ‘male toy’ or something that only ‘men do’. He also is surrounded by
women, and has been exposed to building blocks, colouring books, sorting
puzzles, all toys that are stimulating and gender neutral.
But why would male
sex hormones make people favor wheeled vehicles and balls? A common
explanation holds that these toys facilitate more vigorous activity, which boys
are evolutionarily programmed to seek out. But the 2009 study indicated that
their affinity for balls and trucks starts before the stage when children
actually start playing with toys. At just 3 months old, the newborn boys
already fixed their eyes on the toys associated with their gender. "Given
that these babies lack physical abilities that would allow them to 'play' , our
finding suggests that males preference for male-typical toys are not determined
by the activities supported by the toys (i.e., movement, rough play),"
Alexander said.
Toddlers with higher levels of testosterone are more active
than toddlers with lower levels of the sex hormone, but the active toddlers
moved around just as much when holding a toy truck, ball or doll. "We find
no evidence to support the widely held belief that boys prefer toys that
support higher levels of activity," she wrote in an email. And this is
true. My son is very active, and if
If it isn't vigorous activity they're after, it could be
that boys simply find balls and wheeled vehicles more interesting, while human
figures appeal more to girls. As for why evolution would program these toy
preferences, the researchers have a few ideas. According to Alexander, one
possibility is that girls have evolved to perceive social stimuli, such as
people, as very important, while the perceived worth of social stimuli (and
thus, dolls that look like people) is weaker in boys.
Boys, meanwhile, tend to develop superior spatial navigation
abilities. "Multiple studies in humans and primates shows there is a
substantial male advantage in mental rotation, which is taking an object and
rotating it in the mind," Wallen said. "It could be that manipulating
objects like balls and wheels in space is one way this mental rotation gets
more fully developed."
All of this scientific data made me wonder; do I have no say
in what my son likes?
It also made me retrospect, why did I find it so fascinating
that my son should like cars. Would I have worried if my daughter loved cars? No,
I would have applauded her for breaking the mould. And if my son had been drawn
towards pink frilly dolls? I would have celebrated his choices. But the fact
that my son was so , for want of a better word, typical, had had me , a person
who had always tried to break convention and step away from the stereotypical
had finally bowed to nature.
What had started out as a mothers fascination with her sons
fascination in cars, had led to more deeper questions on nature versus nurture.
I am looking forward to the years ahead, when I continue to
try and understand the basic tenant of parenting; knowing that your child is
his/her own person, we are here to celebrate them and love them and let them
become the person they want to be ,and were meant to be.
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