ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Human Developmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1650155
"Cause they're girls/boys": Preschool Children's Play and Toy Choices
Provisionally accepted
- Ankara Yildirim Beyazit Universitesi, Ankara, Türkiye
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This case study aims to determine children's play and toy preferences that they think are specific to girls and boys. The study group consisted of 50 children (21 girls, 29 boys) aged 48-72 months, attending a preschool in İstanbul, Türkiye. The data were obtained through pictures and semi-structured interviews and evaluated through descriptive analysis. As a result, the opinions on the plays by both girls and boys were mostly gathered under "pretend play". Children included the physical movement type of play in a minority of the girls' plays. In addition, children expressed their opinions mostly in the "representative toys" category. On the other hand, differences were observed in the types of representative toys in the girls' and boys' toys. While boys' toys in this category were frequently cars, imaginary heroes, and army toys; girls' toys were frequently dolls, character-figure toys, and doll houses. As another result, both girls and boys mostly reported gendered expressions and expressions of emotions regarding the motivations for the plays by children. In line with these results, both girls' and boys' views on plays and toys differ depending on gender but, both girls' and boys' views are parallel to each other.
Keywords: gender, Children's play, Toys, Play motivation, gender identity
Received: 20 Jun 2025; Accepted: 16 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Özkan Kunduracı. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hurşide Kübra Özkan Kunduracı, hursidekubra@gmail.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.