Abstract
The present study was conducted to investigate the avoidance of feminine toys by kindergarten boys as a function of: (a) adult presence or absence, and (b) the adult's expressed attitudes (strictness, permissiveness, and “neutral”) towards inappropriate sex-typing. An attempt was made to measure boys' avoidance of the feminine toys uncontaminated by their preference for sex-appropriate toys. The design of this study was a 2 (presenceabsence)×3 (strictness, permissiveness, and control) design. Sixty kindergarten boys between ages 5-2 to 6-0 with a mean age of 5-6 were assigned randomly to each of six groups of equal size. Following the observation of the adult's attitudes toward inappropriately sex-typed behavior by another young child, S was offeredtwo groups of toys, feminine toys and “neutral” toys. No masculine toys were available. One-half of the Ss played with toys in the presence of the adult and the other half of the Ss in the absence of the adult experimenter. S's play behavior was recorded once every 10 seconds for 7 minutes in terms of predetermined behavior categories by judges who observed the session through a one-way mirror. Two scores were derived from the observation-latency scores and percent-feminine scores. Latency scores consisted of the number of time intervals elapsing before S was observed to look at, come close to, or touch a feminine toy. Percent-feminine scores consisted of the number of intervals in which S looked at, was close to, or touched a feminine toy divided by the number of intervals spent with all toys.
The major findings of the study were as follows:
(a) Whether the adult was permissive or strict, Ss in the adult presence condition showed a stronger avoidance of femmine toys than Ss in the adult-absence condition.
(b) For both the adult-presence and absence condition, the magnitude of the latency scores were in the order of looking, position, and touching (small to large). However, time elapsing between the beginning of S's looking at and approaching the feminine toys tended to be longer for the adult-presence condition than the adult-absence condition.
(c) Both the latency and percent-feminine scores revealed that the strict attitudes expressed by the adult toward sex-typing had an effect to strengthen the avoidance of the feminine toys in Ss while the permissive attitudes had a disinhibitory effect on inappropriately sex-typed responses.
(d) The inhibitory effect of the strict attitudes was most clearly shown in the touching scores. The group differences with respect to the adult's attitudes were least shown in the data for the looking scores.
