The Importance Of Gender-Typed Play

The study conducted in 2012 by Goldberg, Kashy, and Smith used the Pre-School Activities Inventory (PSAI; Golombok & Rust, 1993) to examine play in a select group of children. This age group was never previously examined for gender-typed play behaviors. The data can now be used to distinguish how a child’s perceived play changes through development. It was important to examine pre-school age children so that data can be compiled from age groups across the developmental spectrum. The children’s play was examined for gender-typed qualities through the parents’ viewpoint. The gender-typed play qualities were defined by examining to what degree behaviors conformed to gender norms.
Question
The children’s play was examined for gender-typing to decipher if there was a correlation between the perception of gender-typed behavior and the family structure present. Researchers were interested in discovering a correlation between a child’s play and the makeup of the family. They looked at homes with lesbian, gay and heterosexual parents to discover if the parents’ sexuality related to how they saw their children’s play behavior. This study was the first of its kind done in the age range of 2 to 4 years old. The perception of gender-type play can be detected as early as 18 months old in children. It is very beneficial to have a study examining the perception of these behaviors at such an early time. The results from this study can be complied with studies across the lifespan to compare changes of gender-type behavior alongside development (Goldberg, Kashy, & Smith, 2012).

Hypotheses
Examining lesbian, gay-male, and heterosexual families that had adopted children two years prior to study allowed researchers to discover a correlation between...

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...lifying a child’s play style. Knowing the likeliness of enforcing or encouraging gender-typed play, parents can take an active approach in the way they view and encourage gender-typed behaviors in their homes.
Weaknesses
The major limitation of this study is its reliance on only parental reports. In new studies of this kind children should be observed by an outsider in the home or school setting. In the future this study should be replicated over a larger time frame. Observations could be made during the span of a few years for every developmental stage. Since parents were the only reporters, the data collected was only from the information the parents had experienced recently. Also, the population size was relatively small considering all the participants were broken down into family structures and the children were considered individually of those structures.