The most salient differences are in the domain of play. Boys engage in what developmental psychologists refer to as “rough-and-tumble play.” Girls prefer the company of dolls to a knee in the ribs. Toy interests are another key sex difference, with boys gravitating toward toy machine guns and monster trucks and girls orienting toward baby dolls and hyperfeminized figurines. Young children of both sexes enjoy pretend play, but the roles within the fantasy context are gender-segregated by age two. Girls enact the role of, say, cooing mothers, ballerinas or fairy princesses, and boys prefer to be soldiers and superheroes. Not surprisingly, therefore, boys naturally select other boys for playmates, and girls would much rather play with other girls.
So on the basis of some earlier, shakier research, along with a good dose of common sense, Bailey and Zucker hypothesized that homosexuals would show an inverted pattern of sex-typed childhood behaviors-little boys preferring girls as playmates and becoming infatuated with their mother's makeup kit little girls strangely enamored of field hockey or professional wrestling-that sort of thing.
