By: AVA WOFFORD
Staff Writer
Nature vs. Nurture refers to the debate of what aspects of behavior are inherited by means of genetics or acquired by means of learning. This goes for things such as personality, cognitive traits, temperament, and psychopathology.
Baby showers for girls normally consist of the color pink with bows and ribbons as decoration. Regular presents for such events consist of dresses, hairpins, pink lacy blankets, and anything resembling a princess. For this reason, individuals might assume that this is the nature of most girls. In the article Is it Girlś Nature or Nurture? By April Austin from The Christan Science Monitor she explains¨But Mr. Gurian’s recent book, ´The Wonder of Girls´ (Pocket Books, $26), asserts that women’s “primal need” to be mothers, to nurture children, overrides all else – and that women who make trade-offs to pursue careers or support the family will come to regret them,¨(Austin 1). This shows how females are normally parenting figures and how a female´s genetics generally make them this way. This could explain why so many toys given to girls normally involve some sort of mothering role such as baby dolls. But this doesn’t explain the color pink being used for girls. In the blog Pink v blue – are children born with gender preferences? Polly Curtis on The Guardian states¨ The study that asked the youngest children, 120 aged under two, that Arney could identify was conducted by Professor Melissa Hines at Cambridge University and it concluded that if you ask children under the age of two, there is no color preference, with both sexes preferring pinker tones and both also prefer rounder shapes,¨(Curtis 2). This shows the reader that there is no true color preference and that kids just in general tend to like lighter tones. In many ways, the colors and things that girls like are in fact more from how they were raised, while things like motherhood are just nature.
Baby showers for boys tend to involve the color blue with different types of animals scattered around. The presents normally include blue jumpers, toy cars, stuffed animals, and toys that represent honor or courage such as superheroes and firefighters. These stronger seeming toys might just seem like nature to many, but it could be the aggression seen in more males than women. In the post ‘Nature not nurture’ is to blame for aggressive children by Science editor, Steve Conner on Independent he cases ¨Toddlers are born with aggressive instincts rather than learning to be violent from their surroundings. What they do have to learn, however, is how to control this instinctive behavior in the critical years before they start school, Professor Richard Tremblay of the University of Montreal said,¨(Conner 1). This shows us that children are just physical in general, but boys have a harder time growing out of it. They are just naturally more aggressive than women are. This leads us to toys. Some say that any boy would rather play with a Power Ranger than a barbie doll. In the blog Pink v blue – are children born with gender preferences? Polly Curtis on The Guardian states¨ However, Hines’s research also identified that at the age of 12 months, boys and girls’ preference for dolls was similar (57.2% of girls looked at the dolls compared with 56.4% of boys). By 24 months boys had shifted towards the car image (52.7% of girls and 47.9% of boys looked at the doll first). This, Hines suggests, adds evidence to the argument that part of toy taste is acquired rather innate,¨(Curtis 3). This shows that boys don’t just naturally gravitate to toys like cars. That this is an acquired mindset.
