April 7, 2015
Why are children color-coded by gender? Ever wonder whether babies and toddlers innately prefer pink if they’re girls and blue if they’re boys? If not, what colors are children drawn to at these young ages, and does it have anything to do with gender? What about older children and adults when they’re asked about their favorite colors?
Writing for the BBC, Claudia Hammond examined the research to look for answers to such questions. Among the various findings she came up with was this one:
“You could argue that it doesn’t really matter what colour babies are exposed to the most, but it can even affect the way we, as adults, treat them. There’s one famous study showing that women treated the exact same babies differently depending on whether they were dressed in pink or blue. If the clothes were blue they assumed it was a boy, played more physical games with them and encouraged them to play with a squeaky hammer, whereas they would gently soothe the baby dressed in pink and choose a doll for them to play with.”
Read “The ‘pink vs blue’ gender myth” here.
