Despite the best efforts of the social justice warriors, science continues to disprove the theory that gender is a social construct rather than an innate quality determined by biology.
PsyPost reports a meta-data study by John Barry of University College London’s Institute for Women’s Health, published in the journal Infant and Child Development, finds that children prefer toys “typed to their gender.”
The study, which examined studies from multiple countries over the course of 36 years with a sample size of 1,600 children, almost evenly divided between boys and girls, showed that “boys played with male-typed toys more than girls did, and girls played with female-typed toys more than boys did.”
The abstract for the study asserts that toy preferences are both “innate” and influenced by “social forces,” adding that “the consistency in finding sex differences in children’s preferences for toys typed to their own gender indicates the strength of this phenomenon and the likelihood that it has a biological origin.”
The study grants that social influence plays a larger role in the selection of gender-typed toys over time.
“Older boys played more with male-typed toys relative to female-typed toys than did younger boys,” the abstract reads. “Additionally an effect of the length of time since study publication was found: girls played more with female-typed toys in earlier studies than in later studies, whereas boys played more with male-typed toys less when observed in the home than in a laboratory.”
The findings do reveal that “environmental influences and age-related changes” will also affect children’s toy preferences.
Barry contends that the study’s findings disprove the modern notion that biology plays no role in gender. “There is a fashion today to say that gender is purely a social construct. In reality, gendered behavior is a mix of biology and social influence, and I think our meta-analysis supports this view,” Barry told PsyPost.
Not surprisingly, despite the study’s findings, progressives continue to advance the notion that gender and biological sex are separate in an effort to normalize transgenderism, including among children, despite the vast evidence that children who experience gender confusion will eventually outgrow it.
Australian psychiatrist Stephen Stathis states that up to three-fourths of young patients “who present with gender variant interests and behaviors, or are gender diverse” will grow out of that phase without the need for treatment.
“You might get a six- or seven-year-old girl wanting to dress as a boy,” he said. “She may even say she wants to be a boy. When she hits puberty, she says, ‘No, I’m just a girl who likes to do boy things.’”
Unfortunately, many of those children will be misdiagnosed as transgender and will be administered hormone treatments before they’ve had the opportunity to get through that confusing period.
The efforts to normalize transgenderism pose a particular psychological risk to young people, notes Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, who stated, “Institutions that promote ‘transition affirmation’ are guilty of ‘nothing less than institutionalized child abuse’ and creating ‘untold psychological damage.'”
“All children should be told the truth that sex does not ever change and cannot be changed,” Cretella told LifeSiteNews in an e-mail. “All children should be nurtured to embrace their bodies and the reality of their biological sex. All children should be affirmed as the unique boys or girls their bodies proclaim them to be.”
The researchers behind the Infant and Child Development study agree that biology and science should not be treated as a threat, but rather embraced.
“Research into gender differences often attracts criticism which seems to be based on the moral judgment that biological bases for sex differences are somehow harmful to society,” Barry told PsyPost. “As scientists, and as members of the public who value truth over opinion, we need to move beyond moralistic arguments about facts and instead use the facts in beneficial ways.”
However, it seems that progressives are more interested in advancing an agenda than in benefiting the emotional and mental health of young children.
Earlier this year, a kindergarten teacher at the Rocklin Academy School in Rocklin, California, infuriated parents by teaching an end-of-school-year lesson on transgenderism that culminated with a sort of “transition ceremony” in which a five-year-old boy announced that he was a “girl” with a girl’s name and changed into girl’s clothing.
Parents say their children were traumatized by what they witnessed. “My daughter came home crying and shaking, so afraid she could turn into a boy,” said one parent.
