I’ve got to thinking about the great nature/nurture debate today. Let me tell you how I got to that.
Little miss is obsessed with princesses at the moment, totally obsessed. She will only watch a film with a princess in it, is only interested in reading books about princesses, will only listen to a CD if it’s music from an aforementioned princess film, and spends every moment she possibly can wearing a princess dress-up dress, acting out various scenes from princessy films (she always plays the princess of course, daddy’s the prince, and I’m often the witch, make of that what you will). This is fine, hubs and I don’t mind at all, but what’s interesting is how this little obsession has come about. We said from day one that she can be in to whatever she wants, whether that be princesses,cars, pirates, flowers, whatever. We always said we’d never push gender-related toys on her, and yes she does love her train set and cars, but not to nearly the extent she likes princesses!
From an early age she naturally gravitated towards babies and dolls and now at three, it’s princesses. So even though hubs and I didn’t initiate the obsession, is it still a nurture factor? Has she picked up the ‘girlie’ behaviour from nursery or the childminder, or is it all to do with nature and are little girls just genetically wired to like ‘girlie’things? I can’t decide. I’m quite interested to see what the Little dude naturally gravitates towards as he gets older.
Do your children typically like toys and games related to their gender or are they happy to mix it up? I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Princess Little miss.
I think there has to be some ‘nature’ going on as my son was fascinated by things with wheels – cars, trucks, fire engines, diggers – from a very early age. My daughter doesn’t seem to know transport vehicles exist, but she does go crazy for dress ups and has recently started feeding her dolls and soft toys, which my son rarely did. I’m sure there are exceptions to this but in our house it seems the stereotypes for boys and girls are holding true!
It’s interesting isn’t it? x