I READ A PIECE OF RESEARCH just the other day that showed that boys are different to girls! Amazing eh?
Now, we’ve all seen what happens when you give a three-year-old the choice of playing with a doll or a truck. In most cases you’ll find that girls prefer the dolls to the trucks and the boys the trucks to the dolls. In one such experiment, it was found that girls somewhat prefer the dolls, but boys overwhelmingly prefer the trucks.
I know with my own experiments, which are peer-reviewed and incredibly robust, my four kids (two boys and two girls) reflect this perfectly.
However, according to some social scientists, it’s probably my fault. They call it ‘social construction’. In other-words, by the age of three, kids have already been given a clear message about what girls and boys are ‘supposed’ to do – and this is largely thanks, of course, to our sexually oppressive and overly-male-dominated society …
Now, let me make this clear. I’m not denying that culture plays a big role in the development of our kids (nature vs nurture anyone?) And I’m also totally opposed to ‘forcing’ our kids to play with what we consider culturally acceptable. But I do have some nagging doubts that a lot of this stuff is PC nonsense gone mad …
Kim Wallen at the Yerkes Primate Research Centre in Atlanta, decided to repeat the above experiment with juvenile monkeys. In it, he gave monkeys a choice of playing with a plush, colourful doll or a boring old grey truck.
What he discovered was amazing. I won’t go into details, but he found (believe it or not) that the girl-monkeys somewhat preferred to play with the doll … but the boy-monkeys overwhelmingly preferred the truck. His conclusion? Boys are more interested in things that move – and girls with colour or texture.
I’d like to hear those same social scientists explain THIS using the social engineering argument! Maybe, just maybe, boys are different to girls …
MIKE COONEY IS GRAPEVINE’S EDITOR, AND SHORTCUTS ARE WHAT HE’S LOOKING FOR … SO HE CAN SPEND LESS TIME AT THE COMPUTER, AND MORE TIME EXPERIMENTING ON HIS MONKEYS KIDS.
