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Programmer Father Asks: What Gets Little Girls Interested In Science?
nbauman writes Programmer David Auerbach is dismayed that, at a critical developmental age, his 4-year-old daughter wants to be a princess, not a scientist or engineer, he writes in Slate. The larger society keeps forcing sexist stereotypes on her, in every book and toy store. From the article: "Getting more women into science and technology fields: Where’s the silver bullet? While I might get more hits by revealing the One Simple Trick to increase female participation in the sciences, the truth is there isn’t some key inflection point where young women’s involvement drops off. Instead, there is a series of small- to medium-sized discouraging factors that set in from a young age, ranging from unhelpful social conditioning to a lack of role models to unconscious bias to very conscious bias. Any and all of these can figure into why, for example, women tend to underrate their technical abilities relative to men. I know plenty of successful women in the sciences, but let’s not fool ourselves and say the playing field in the academic sciences or the tech world is even. My wife attributes her pursuit of programming to being a loner and pretty much ignoring wider society while growing up: 'Being left alone with a computer (with NO INTERNET TO TELL ME WHAT I COULDN’T DO) was the deciding factor,' she tells me."
This is practically a troll.
Try as we do, we can't escape the reality that girls are not only physically different than boys, but as an aggregate group do lean towards certain behaviours and interests.
Some of it may be learned, and there are of course outliers, but you see similar behaviour tied to gender across very different and sometimes geographically isolated cultures. In the least technical terms, there really are "girl things" and "guy things". This becomes rediculously obvious to anyone who has spent any time around little kids.
I'm all for removing artificial barriers, but once they are down we're gonna have to accept that maybe girls really do want to be princesses and maybe guys really do want to be monster trucks (not drive, be damnit, BE!)
I really doubt this guys daughter is deciding to be a princess because she feels society has limited her career choices. She wants to be a princess because that's the kind of thing little girls lean towards. If she wants to play with lego, by all means encourage that shit, but if she just wants to dress up and play with doll, let her play with her dolls and leave her alone!
Jesus fucking christ, give it a break. Your kid is 4. Mine were still talking about being medieval knights at that age.
The Internet doesn't tell people what they cannot do. Why is the most ridiculous statement of the summary in ALL CAPS?
at a critical developmental age, his 4-year-old daughter wants to be a princess, not a scientist or engineer
This alone makes the entire premise completely idiotic.
Most 4-year-old *boys* want to be professional athletes, firemen, or, astronauts. I am a "principal architect", and I only decided I wanted to be "an engineer" at about age 23 (about a year after I actually worked in the field).
The only "critical development" for a 4 year old should be learning how play well with others and talk in semi-coherent sentences.
Why can't a 4 year old, girl or boy, play with a fantasy? Most little boys I've met aren't playing at realistic roles like scientist or engineer either. They want to be a pokemon master or a super hero or an "army guy". It isn't any different for a girl, a princess is a common fantasy for little girls. And the girls I've met sometimes had super powers or were princesses AND doctors at the same time. A four year old should be encourage to explore whatever fantasy they want and use their imagination freely without judgement.
Because when they get older, some asshole is going to start judging them and a little something is going to die inside of them. Then they'll be free to become the scientist, engineer, kindergarten teacher or stripper they were meant to be.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This guy sounds like an insufferable asshole.
Kids are interesting because they arn't restrained by years of learned social behaviour. Sure they are influenced a bit by society, but at that age they tend to just do what their hearts tell them to do regardless, which to the great frustration of people like the author often conforms to the stereotypes they are trying to fight.
Attempts to raise children in gender neutral environments always seem to end terribly, and of course there's the whole David Reimer thing.
> Programmer David Auerbach is dismayed that, at a critical developmental age, his 4-year-old daughter wants to be a princess, not a scientist or engineer, he writes in Slate. The larger society keeps forcing sexist stereotypes on her
"Dad is dismayed his 4-year-old daughter wants". It is DAD who has a problem with what his daughter wants, who is upset that a 4-year-old girl is acting like a 4-year-old girl. "The larger society" isn't dismayed by her making her own choices. You are, David. You are the one who is butthurt that she didn't want to trick or treat dressed as an engineer. "The larger society" would be fine with her being a rodeo rider, a pilot, or baker. You sir are the one trying to force your choice of career on her before she even enters kindergarten.
There is one piece of good news, David. Unless you are King David, she won't actually grow up to be a princess. Next week she might want to be an astronaut and a week after that she might want to be a teacher. When she grows up, she might be an artist, a counselor, or an HR professional. She almost certainly won't be a princess, though, so don't worry about that.
Maybe it would be best if he gave her to a less obsessive relative...
The whole article is a clear indication that Auerbach and his wife are as fucked up as those Canadians trying to raise their child genderless.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
What's worse than being a child in a culture that pushes people into stereotypical roles? Having parents that want to dictate their child's interests in order to make themselves look good.
So one day you daughter says she's “ready for princesses” and "part of me died"? Get the fuck over yourself.
Seriously, stop using your own child as a tool for making yourself look like a good progressive and listen to her for a change. When (and if) she wants to be a nerd, she'll let you know - your job is to make sure she knows she has the choice, not make it for her.
Princesses love castles.
Go to the local building supply center, and get enough lumber to build a playhouse in the back yard. Make sure the kid is out there actually swinging a hammer and measuring and cutting wood. I did this with my 4 year old daughter. We had a grand time. Of course, at 4 she couldn't really swing a framing hammer to full effect and needed a lot of help to sink the nails home, but hey, it was a great time. And participating in the entire project from beginning to end was a great way to learn a few practical things. But the most important of all was to treat the idea of a girl doing a construction project as a normal thing.
Also, bury the kid in enough Lego to build a couple of princess castles. At age 4, developing spacial reasoning through tactile learning is going to cause the brain development that becomes math/science/engineering thinking later on.
Another thing I did was as soon as my daughter could reliably count to twenty, I took her to the local electronic surplus houses and had her help me get parts. I'd hand her a box of switches or capacitors and tell her to count out 10 of them for me while I searched out the next part. And of course if she wanted a couple of pretty, shiny, purple caps for her own collection, that's OK too.
For starting on actual coding, Scratch and Lego robots go a long way. When the time comes for that.
So looking back, I'm not sure what I did that worked, or maybe nothing actually worked and my kid would have been an engineer regardless, but she is now in the middle of doing college applications to top engineering schools. And still likes pink and purple. If soldering irons and Bridgeport mills were available in pink, she'd be there. It is not necessary to do a princess-ectomy to end up with an engineer.
This doesn't work.
The grandparents will show them to her when you've trusted them to babysit. And your relatives will send Christmas gifts all wrapped up and when your little girl open's 'em -- yep: Disney products. And she'll see them at her friends' houses... she'll come home singing some crap song from Frozen over and over.
Her baby-sitter will buy her a Barbie. Women in lots of ads she sees will have their necks lengthend with photoshop. Her school will sell her princess books just like the ones they stock their library with. Costco will aim 90% of the female children's halloween costumes at the princess segment, half of those will be marked Disney. Your daughter will drag you back to the costumes over and over looking for Disney princesses she's seen and beggining you to buy one while you want to just get some cheese and get out.
Because it's not just your daughter who's the target of this long-necked, big-eyed, princess bullshit -- everyone is. And that's why you do get concerned about it, because it's not just Disney telling her to be a pricess, it's EVERYONE.
It's really frustrating having some stranger on the street tell your daughter she's a princess, but it happens all the time. I suspect it's not socially acceptable to snarl back "you calling her a parasite?"
At 4 or 5, she has all the time in the world to decide what she wants to do and be and plenty of time to change her mind about things, but this crap isn't going to stop when she's 10 or 15 or 30 or 60, and her whole life she will be judged and praised or criticized by a nation of people who are hit with the same propaganda.
As a man, aged say 30, would you want to date/marry a woman scientist? Quite frankly, in practical terms, how many men would enjoy a career-driven female partner? You're talking about industries with crazy amounts of always-on, after-hours, on-call, and never-ending work. I don't want that for myself, and I don't want that for my beloved.
I don't want that for anyone whom I love.
If women tend to want that kind of work-horse life for their men, well, that's a problem to be addressed on their side.
I would love nothing more than for my beloved to quit her very successful, high-paying, high-power and high-hours and high-stress career, and come have fun with me. Quite frankly, she'd live a lot longer, and a lot better.
Raise your daughter to be happy, and stress-free. Why would you want to shove her into a life of stress and hardship?
I am a father of 3 girls. None of my girls call themselves "Princess", and none of them see themselves as someone who needs a "Prince" on a White Horse to rescue her from whatever trouble
I never treat any of my girls as princess. I treat them as normal human beings - normal human beings who understand the danger of this world and who are alert to the dangers around them
The "Programmer Father" is in dismay because his 4-year old girl sees herself as a "Princess", and he got nobody but himself (plus his better half) to blame - because since that little girls was an infant they kept calling her "Princess" and kept treating her as if she is not capable of doing anything for and by herself
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You've got all those words backwards except "anecdote". This actually has a sense of perspective unlike the usual FUD, it's consistent with all the data we've got (again unlike the usual FUD), and it has a clear central premise around which everything including the anecdotes are based.
Let me quote another woman to explain the problem you're having with accepting HedgeMage's arguments:
However we are dealing with an ideology which defines women exclusively as Victims. Therefore women who fail to fulfill the role of Victim must be broken and returned to their proper place. They must be subject to abuse or de-feminized and told they have been corrupted by patriarchal ideology.
Women are supported and encouraged but they are only supported and encouraged to be broken and helpless. They are kept within a set archetype.
The attacks on women now make sense. It's a paradoxical cycle where people abuse women to justify the claim that women need to be defended. Defenders never question their behavior because it is justified by the existence of the victim which they themselves created.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."