Gender stereotyping may start as young as three months, study of babies’ cries shows

Gender stereotyping may start as young as three months, study of babies' cries shows. Gender stereotyping may start as young as three months, according to a study of babies' cries from the University of Sussex. Adults attribute degrees of femininity and masculinity to babies based on the pitch of their cries, as shown by a new study by researchers from the University of Sussex, the University of Lyon/Saint-Etienne and Hunter College City University of New York. The research is published in the journal BMC Psychology . The study found: Adults often wrongly assume babies with higher-pitched cries are female and lower pitched cries are male When told the gender of the baby, adults make assumptions about the degree of masculinity or femininity of the baby, based on the pitch of the cry Adults generally assume that babies with higher-pitched cries are in more intense discomfort Men who are told that a baby is a boy tend to perceive greater discomfort in the cry of the baby. This is likely to be due to an ingrained stereotype that boy babies should have low-pitched cries. (There was no equivalent finding for women, or for men's perception of baby girls.