Children's Gendered Sense of Self and Play as Represented Through Drawings and Written Descriptions

Abstract

This study investigates the relations between children's perceptions of self and play in 89 school-aged children (52 girls, 37 boys, ages 5 to 8) in two Canadian schools. The study involves standardized measures, interviews, and drawings to assess children's perceptions of play and self. Teacher ratings of emotional competencies were also collected. Findings show that children's play drawings and corresponding descriptions differ according to gender such that girls referred to more social and psychological aspects of play and boys focused mainly on physical activities. Compared to boys, family structure played a stronger role in girls' play and self-representations in that positive associations were found between number of characters drawn and number of siblings for girls only. Implications for socioemotional and cognitive development are discussed.