So my daughter Ava is 3, and very smart and articulate for her age, I may add. She was in the bath the other day, playing with her 3 rubber duckies; one yellow, one blue, and one pink. She was dividing her similarly-colored foam alphabet letters into piles, color-coding them among the ducks (the blue duck had a blue pile, the pink duck had a pink pile, etc.). Ava was talking to herself and setting up the ducks' "families" when I decided to ask her who each duck was (e.g. names, etc). She without pause, pointed to the pink duck and said "This is the mommy duck." Pointed to the blue duck, "This is the daddy." And to the yellow duck, she said "This is the kid." Hmm. So in order to investigate a bit, I asked her why she chose to assign them in this way. Very matter-of-factly, she said that the pink duck was the mommy "because she's the lady cuz she's pink." And the daddy? "because 'mans' are blue." I found it very interesting that at such and early age, and without any specific teaching or instruction from me or my husband regarding society's perception of gender based on these two colors, my child assigned them the same way as the majority of American children would. And she's only 3!
Just thought I'd share my little "experiment"!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with your daughter – I’ve always assigned pink with females and blue with males. Interestingly, my daughter recently mentioned a study pertaining to sea glass, and the colors of sea glass men search for verses the color women search for on the shore. According to the study women are more likely to spot pastel colors whereas men are more likely to pass by the soft colors and focus on bolder colors of sea glass
ReplyDelete