Is Play Gender Specific?

Cover Feature

Vin Callan from Childs Play UK queries whether play and gender are connected…

What are the clearest play memories you have with you mum? Was it sewing, cooking, knitting, arts and crafts, reading and storytelling? What are the clearest memories you have of playing with your dad? Was it wrestling, football, rugby, den-making, tree-climbing, making weapons, using drills or screwdrivers? Was it because that’s what they enjoyed doing? Was it cultural? Biological? Or, was it due to who went out to work and who stayed at home?

Speaking to a small number of grandparents, I asked them what their memories where. Overwhelmingly, they told me that their mum would do arts and craft, baking and sewing and their dad would have the kids helping to fix the car. Interestingly this was the same regardless of the their gender – girls would also help dad with the car and boys would bake with mum. This was much the same as my upbringing – boxing, wrestling and fixing bikes with my dad and drawing and baking with my mum. But things were a little different when it came to spending time with my brothers. Our house was full of Action Men, Evel Knievel, Batman and Robin, Spiderman and the Fonz. We had toy guns, boxing gloves, Transformers, drawers full of toy cars and Airfix models of fighter jets. So, this is what we played with. It got me thinking. If we only give boys footballs, trucks, guns, superhero figures, robots and dinosaurs surely that’s what they are going to play with? Likewise, if all we give girls are Barbies, My Little Ponies, princess dresses, nail art and toy ironing boards, isn’t that going to be all they will play with?

What if, regardless of gender, we gave children the following:

● A box filled with card, wool, tape andcolouring pens

● A hammer, some nails and some wood

● A tool kit and a work bench

● Optimus Prime and Rainbow Dash

● Elsa and Batman

● Or just a massive pile of Lego bricks?

Would boys make guns and forts and robot armies? Would girls build princess castles and animal shelters? Would the choice be ours, or theirs?

A few weeks ago I was chatting to a film-maker about play and he paraphrased actor Robert Carlyle as saying, “Kids don’t need all these fancy toys, give ‘em a stick, a stick can be anything, a wand, a sword a person, whatever you can imagine it to be.”

A lot of the time children, like adults, will choose what they know. If we offer them a balanced “menu” of play opportunities they can make informed choices and makes things more spontaneous and more fun for everyone.

This brings us around to play experiences with adults outside the home. Most children spend their weekdays away from home in either nurseries, schools or other childcare and after-school settings where female staff are the majority. Just 1-2% of childcare and out-of-school-care workers are male, 15 % of primary school workers are male and 17% of playworkers in the UK are male. Why is the number of men working with kids so so low? Low pay, reinforced perceptions of gender roles and stereotypes – of woman being natural carers and recruitment and marketing have all been sited.

In addition, the risk of being wrongly accused of indecent behaviour, the perception that men can be perceived as being threatening or aggressive, and the perception that working with children is a career path for women because they are perceived as more nurturing may deter

men from choosing a career with children. These stereotypes run so deeply in our society we probably don’t notice at first, but just think about how supermarkets divide toys and clothes into “boys” and “girls” sections with unicorns in one aisle and dinosaurs in the other.

We live in a world where we can choose what gender we want to live as, where gender can be fluid. What if we applied that to the way we played and parented? What if we were fluid with our approach to play and our approach to parenting?What if we balanced our own masculine and feminine traits when playing?

We all have masculine and feminine characteristics, characteristics which help us to nurture and care for children, to take risks and be adventurous, to find out how things work and to share our experience of the world with others. I feel we need to look to ourselves to provide and model that balance, to show our kids it’s OK to be themselves and to choose what they want to play with without being shackled by fictitious boundaries.

I can’t deny that some research suggests that there is a preference towards types of play depending on gender. There have been experiments where male monkeys gravitate towards trucks and female monkeys prefer playing with dolls. I’m not in any position to say that the research is wrong. I’m just proposing that, if all children have the freedom to choose from a balanced play ‘menu’ that it will enrich their play experience. And hey, you never know, it might even break down gender stereotypes and lead to a more equal society in the future.

Vin is an Operations Manager with Childs Play Clubs UK, where he helps teams provide child-led, play-inspired out-of-school care in the South West of England across four sites in Cheltenham and Frome. Visit childsplayclub.co.uk to find out more about local after-school clubs or email vin@childsplayclub.co.uk

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