I am a student and I recently observed children in a preschool for a psychology class project. I noticed that even at this young age, the girls played with the girls and the boys with the boys. Do children of all ages prefer their own gender for playmates?
Children do not always prefer to play with their own gender. In fact, through much of preschool, boys and girls play quite happily with each other. Let me take you through the years, so you can see the development.
At two, children are just beginning to discover the world. They are much more interested in learning how to work a door knob or how to pour water out of a pitcher and fill it up again than they are in playing with other children. They are also very concerned about establishing their own identity as a human being who is separate and distinct from their mother (or whomever their primary caregiver is). A two-year-old will play next to another child regardless of gender, but they will rarely engage in any sustained social interaction. We call this kind of activity "parallel play."
As a child turns three, many of these big issues are resolved. Now a child is ready to turn to other children. In fact, the year between three and four is a highly social age. Children learn to negotiate, compromise and share with their peers. At this time, boys and girls play together beautifully.
As a chid approaches four, there is a marked shift in behavior. This is the time that gender identification becomes very strong. It is not just a question or liking "girl things" or "boy activities." In fact, girls stick together in the block area, as well as the dramatic play area. This is also true for boys. In this age of strong competitiveness, where children are so concerned with who is the oldest or tallest or strongest, they tend to stick to members of their own gender, who form the easiest basis of comparison.
Children between the ages of four and five are learning to identify with the parent of the same sex. This may involve "falling in love" with the parent of the opposite sex and realizing they can't marry them. (Yes! Freud was right!)
By the time the child is five, this "Oedipal Complex" has been mostly resolved. The identification with their own gender is complete, and that is who they hang around with, for the most part, until early adolescence when raging hormones set in. By then, the opposite gender starts to look interesting once more!
