The Measurement of Masculinity and Femininity in Children

Sex differences in the play constructions of pre‐school children∗

“…According to Brown(1956),bytheage of four or five, most children are aware of sex-appropriate behaviors and, identifying with a sexually unspecified "It" figure, will choose as proper for the "It" those toys and clothes which they see as proper for one of their own sex. Based on the fact that the games which Terman and Miles (1926) found would discriminate between the sexes but did not always discriminate between them in more recent research, 132 ROBERTA A. GOODFADER Rosenberg and Sutton-Smith (1959) constructed and validated a scale which would prove more applicable for children in the 1960's. It was found that in grade school, numerous studies of toy and game interests demonstrated very marked sex differences: boys' games tended to involve forceful physical contact, the propulsion of objects through space, and complex team organization; whereas girls' games tended to involve more static social dramatizations, more verbal elements (singing and chanting), and ritualistic non-competitive actions.…”

The Scientific View of Sport

“…Sutton -Smith et al (1959-Smith et al ( , 1963) use a different classification by the categories of chance, strategy and skill. Their cross-cultural analysis on the basis of data out of Murdock's Human Relations Area Files indicates that games of skill are preferred by higher-status groups and men, while lower-status groups and women prefer games of chance (1963).…”

“…Though changes in the structure and type of girls' games indicate the changing role of the women (Rosenberg and SuttonSmith, 1960), their participation in sport, especially in competitive sport, is low (Cofey, 1956). Girls and women seem to perceive competitive sport and games differently from boys and men, and we may suppose that the function of girls' games is more display than socialization (Rosenberg and Sutton-Smith, 1959). Since on the level ofless advanced societies the sexes are often strictly kept apart in games (Krieger 1955;Patel and Brewster, 1957), it is an open question whether in modern societies, despite the fact that women are more interested in games of strategy and chance and men in games of skill (Rosenberg and Sutton-Smith, 1960), the interests of men and women may overlap more and more.…”

The Assessment and Treatment of Gender‐Disturbed Boys by Guidance Counselors

“…One of the major characteristics of boys with deviant gender-identity development is a strong childhood preference to play with "feminine" sex-typed toys and to engage in feminine games and activities . In addition to in vivo observations, feminine play behaviors can be measured by administering to the child the Sutton-Smith Games Choice Test (Rosenberg & Sutton-Smith, 1959). The scores from this instrument yield a quantitative measure of masculine and feminine play behavior as contrasted to a standardization grouping of normal boys and girls, grades three through six.…”