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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?
Turn her into an unhappy misfit.
(ex. Give her a home-built Linux computer while all her friends play fun games on their Dells.)
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
You're not going to change her interests. The best you can do is give her more diverse options, but she's going to have to choose her own path.
How do you know she's got the right personality/character type to be a scientist or engineer? She might grow up to be a legendary military sniper. That's a field that requires a lot of technical ability, understanding, and calculation, but isn't considered a scientific or engineering career.
Observe her preferences and talk to her. If you're trying to project what you want on her, that's not going to stick. If you can find a common interest and share it, that will be easy to develop.
College enrolment statistics are roughly 60/40 women/men going to college. Nobody cares that 1.5 women go to college for every man.
Growing up, we had Commodore 64s, Atari 800s, and Tandy Color Computers to interest us.
This would be, by far, the best money you could spend.
http://amzn.to/1yREUVd
This single handedly made me fall in love with logic, design, and creative problem solving.
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.
Turns out, it's hard work learning various languages and proper elocution, history, religion, proper manners, protocol and etiquette, art, diplomacy and international relations, and everything else that goes into a well-rounded education to not be a bore and be able to properly fit in with whatever future king your parents arrange for you to marry, or if you are in one of the more progressive kingdoms, the throne itself. I would say you should encourage her to be a proper princess.
between now and when she enters college.
Sorry, the MUST BE WHAT I WANT FOR HER panic among many groups -- including a disturbing number here -- is not going to change her preferences and aptitudes.
Dog is my co-pilot.
and buy ear muffs for the inevitable screaming.
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
My 4 year old wants to be a ninja. Thank goodness social conditioning hasn't deterred him from that admirable career choice.
Let her know that princesses are programming too now.
To do otherwise would be controlling.
Furthermore, there is nothing wrong, morally, or socially, with a little girl wanting to be a princess.
If that wouldn't get boring fast, maybe she *is* ready to be a princess. Along these lines, I found the audiobook of The Curse of Chalion to be quite enjoyable and well done (though probably not for kids), and its sequel, Paladin of Souls, won the 2004 Hugo and Nebula awards.
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.
Let her watch Adventure Time. Princess Bubblegum is both a princess with a castle and servants *and* a really super-smart scientist. There's your role model right there.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
I wrote the above comment based on the summary. Now having read his article, he sounds like less of a jerk than TFS made him out to be.
Still, she's FOUR. Little boys don't actually grow up to be knights and little girls don't actually become princesses (unless they marry a prince, not likely). So relax, dad.
First, as pointed out already, she's four. Hell, she hasn't even developed the faculty of rational thought yet (that starts around seven). Second, what makes you think you know best what profession she should aim towards? Unless she's being self-destructive - and I don't mean the SJW determined kinds - keep your hands off. It's her friggin' life, not yours. I have a daughter. She did fine without me meddling.
Actually, I judge girls by their minds first. Though, I agree, I am on the minority side.
Yup. I've got a 7yo girl that wants to be a princess *and* a paleontologist. And loves My Little Pony (Rainbow Dash) and Mikey from TMNT. Geez, the kid is 4 yo, get over it. The more you force them, the more they reject it. Apparently the OP hasn't gotten over that hurdle as a parent.
The trick is to integrate it into day-to-day life. We've been running a 2 year old experiment on Starbuck's compostable spoons at home (hint- they aren't so far, even in 10% vinegar solution). Buy butterfly gardens and raise them from larve, grow a garden and show your kids the bud, flower and fruit stages, get them a flippin' Estes Rocket kit. The only way to ignite their interest is to show them that you, as an adult, are interested. Hunt for fossils, buy a desiccated coyote skull off eBay and go over all the parts, built home-made lava lamps, melt army men with a magnifying glass. The possibilities are endless. As a bonus, you get a parenting merit badge for it, which is odd, as it's your job as a parent to make sure they have all the skills and knowledge to live as functioning adults.
All you have to do is take an *active* interest in your kids and they'll turn out fine. They're not stupid.They'll get irony and sarcasm (and everything else) way before you introduce them to Black Adder....
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.
My daughter's 8, and she's quite into science, particularly chemistry. Also reading, particularly Neil Gaiman and inevitably J.K Rowling. She hates the colour pink, and her favourite show on TV is Mythbusters. We didn't do anything to make her "turn out" this way, other than possibly the fact that we discouraged toys that required batteries when she was young, and not forcing stereotyped toys on her, though had she ever shown an interest in Barbie, etc we would not have insisted that she shouldn't have them.
My worry (or one of my many worries) as she is on the threshold of puberty is that she'll be a bit too geeky and that will invite bullying and so on. Ad that in turn will turn her away from her natural interests just to fit in with her friends. All you can do is encourage them to be themselves and be proud of not being part of the crowd.
Actually, we do need more (and more diverse) programmers and engineers. And scientists. And blue collar workers.
Fields need to be opened. Variety is the spice of life.
I knew one promising kid. Was building apache forks by the time he was two, built his own mircokernel when he was three. But then around three and a half some troublemaker in daycare slipped him a copy of Visual Studio and a VB.net book during naptime. By the time he hit four he's writing VB.net webapps for mars bars, six months later it's Windows Phone apps for smarties.
Poor kid never even made it to five, he got wet-willied trying to swipe a chocolate milk carton at lunch.
What a waste.
I stole this Sig
The only role model that such a young girl needs are her parents. Be the change you want to see in the world.
Read stories to her that paint women in a different light. Here are some suggestions:
1. The story of Gorgo, queen of Sparta and wife of Leonidas. Gorgo was probably the first documented woman cryptanalyst in the history of western civilization. Reference: Codebreakers.
2. A beautiful and educated woman named Hedy Lamarr invented spread-spectrum technology. We can thank her for modern wifi and cell phones. Reference: Spread Spectrum: Hedy Lamarr and the mobile phone
3. Amelia Earhart, a famous aviatrix and record setter: Who Was Amelia Earhart?
4. Jerri Mock, the first woman to fly solo around the world, . She did this in a single engine Cessna 180. Her autobiography has been recently re-released: Three-Eight Charlie: 1st Woman to Fly Solo Around the World
Read to her. Daily. Schedule at least 6 hours per week.
Limit her exposure to television. When she does watch television, explain to her that much of what is on television is sexist, unenlightened and designed to extract money from the mindless consumer masses. Be thankful that as a girl she isn't likely to descent into the life-sucking hell of video games, but limit (eliminate?) exposure to gaming anyway, for everyone in your house, parents and kids alike. Children cannot grow and flourish if a majority of their free time is spent manipulating pixels in synthetic worlds.
Have her choose a musical instrument. Buy a quality instrument that produces nice sounds. Hire a tutor. Take lessons with her if you don't already play an instrument.
As she gets a little older, buy educational toys for her, such as an electronics kit. You'll probably have to play with her yourself with such toys as other kids her age might not be interested.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
...what she has to say about this entire farce...
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
dad wanted a boy.
Nothing makes a 4 year old more interested in science than watching, and after she turns 5, participating in organized cage fighting. You need to start training her before it's too late.
I would also suggest you wear a luchadore mask around the house and always speak to her using a bad Mexican accent.
I guarantee she will forget about that princess nonsense right away.
Eh, give dad a break, he's only a 4 year old dad. He's not supposed to be wise yet, he's just supposed to keep her alive because she's defenseless. But at 4, with preschool and soccer, external influences do step up pretty big, and the world does start to piss you off. Eventually he'll figure out his dreams are his dreams, and hers are hers, and his job is to help her fend off the world in different ways. And the world never stops pissing you off, because it never stops trying to put your kids in a tidy little pink or blue box.
I'm telling you this as a Father of an 11 year old daughter and a 15 year old son. First off social conditioning is real and there are pitfalls. It's disturbing that a lot of people don't seem to recognize that. At the same time I wouldn't be overly concerned that your daughter wants to be a princess. If pretending to be a princess is fun for her, let her enjoy that. At the same time you should be introducing her to things that she wouldn't find through targeted advertising or in the girl's section of a toy store.
There are lots of science activities she can enjoy while dressed up as Ariel. As she gets older, involve her in your hobbies. Kids love to be included in adult activities. At the same time, don't get her toys she's not old enough for. That will just make her frustrated. Also don't try to talk her out of doing the girly things her friends like, but be vigilant about exposing her to other stuff.
Here's an example of where I very nearly missed the boat. I got a Lego Mindstorm set for my son and I to play with. The only mistake I made is not getting it sooner. He now thinks of himself as too old for Legos so he won't do anything with it on his own though he gladly helps me with building and programming the robots. My daughter never showed any interest in it. She is not in any way a shrinking wall flower. If she wants to do something she will typically ask.
But recognizing that the window for this might be small, I just decided to ask her if she wanted to help me one day. She was soooo happy to help. She's pretty good at it too. The sad thing is that if I were to have never asked, she'd never gotten into it.
Uhm, there's a reason you got modded to -1... there's at least one 4 year old who's going to see this in the morning I think.
Uhm, little problem with that one. Voyager actually rerunning somewhere?
And parents, if you thought you screened the entire series by watching all seven seasons televised by UPN, you don't know what else is in the syndication package. They shot a lot of extra scenes that didn't make air due to the time constraints.
Try https://sallyridescience.com/
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?
Yup. Like those canadians, this article is more an example of what happens when impressionable young adults are spoonfed reality defying propaganda.
Buy her a Maleficent costume and teach her chemistry; color change experiments, glowing water, diet coke and mentos... :D
By not trying to get them interested in science.
The key is to find a sexy girl with a clever mind, ...and naughty thought. How rare this might be...
what happens when impressionable young adults are spoonfed reality defying propaganda.
Let's not forget the religious fundamentalists who don't take their sick children to doctors.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
... is the responsibility of parents. If you want your kid to be an engineer or a scientist then you don't let them self direct outside of that box. You very deliberately encourage certain pursuits.
You have every right to do this as a parent. You do it by imposing your culture on the child. Parents have every right and even responsibility to impose a framework on the child. The alternative is to let the television do it. The television will impose a framework without hesitation or remorse. Do not give it that opportunity. Impose your own programming before it can try.
Here someone will say I am not respecting the freedom of the child. The child is genetically programmed to imprint on adults. If I do not assist this imprinting process then the child will track on the first thing that responds properly. Think of ducks that imprint on humans. The point is that the child will be imprinted regardless. It is a zero sum game. If your child did not adopt the cultural view you prefer then you failed to imprint the child properly.
Doing this properly in the 21st century requires some intelligence, love, patience, and knowledge of human psychology.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Agreed. Both camps love their dogmatic, emotional convictions.
I'm all for encouraging your kids to do whatever they want, but it sounds like you want to push your daughter into something she doesnt want.
Well, that was certainly a collection of one woman's anecdotes, with no central idea, research, or sense of perspective.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
"larger society keeps forcing sexist stereotypes on her"
While that may be somewhat true, it's not the whole story. Babies only a few days old already display typical male or female interests that result in this girl wanting to be a princess. In countries where emancipation has come much further and woman and man are absolutely free to choose their jobs, they tend to pick (stereo)typical male or female jobs than in other countries!
Point is, a big part of gender-stereotypical behavior is not "learned". It is congenital. If you believe otherwise, please don't bother your child with it.
Also, please watch this awesome documentary on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
0x or or snor perron?!
As the father of an IEEE PE Electrical Engineer - I suggest play. Playing with technology toys and lots of reading.
Sure, it's would also be easier if I was crawling at girls' feet, fulfilling their every whim.like most men do. That's not my style. The worst, is that currently, I have turned down more sexual opportunities than I probably ever have, which is quite contrary to my polyamorous nature. That being said, you're probably right, there ain't much sexy girl in tech. Zoe, Brianna and Anita are below average (on my "fuckable" scale, though, Zoe's Deviant Nation porn shoots are kinda attractive), freebsdgirl is a punk fatty... No, really, I can't see.
Actually, I can. I've been pretty much stunned by Jeri Ellsworth. See, my lust for her is not for a quick petty fuck, but an access to her mind. An attraction that I can't find "celeb" female in tech.
To be able to express a complex intellectual model and describe things accurately requires *language*. (Also having a large vocabulary of interesting words is a real intellectual-class winner in the school playground.)
And finally from me, find compelling analogues or fun experiments. If the Earth was the size of a full stop, the Sun would be about the size of a ten pence piece 2 metres away. Now as our good friend Mister Oxbarrow says "On the scale of fishy that's a whole lot of pilchards." When you think about it the idea of a speck floating in some infinity around a blob all that distance away is bizarre. If you roll a marble past a football it keeps going straight and doesn't get bent towards the football by gravity. The whole thing is clearly bonkers.
Hairdresser Aubrey Spetsnatz is dismayed that, at a critical developmental age, her 4-year-old son wants to be an astronaut, not a stylist or makeup artist...
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
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 !
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.
Or she might get knocked up in highschool and drop out. Kids don't always turn out the way you plan and being a good parent means encouraging your kids to succeed and still loving them even when they fall flat on their ass.
It's also a bit hypocritical when geeky/nerdy parents act all shocked and shaken when their offspring would rather go out and interact with other kids than stay at home and play with a chemistry set. Hint: it's just as bad being the stereotypical jock father who smashes in his son's door because the kid prefers reading over sports.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
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."
Ah, but under slashdot rules and regulations disagreeing with the hivemind is trolling. Doesn't bother me, I've had karma to burn forever, including the inevitable sockpuppet accounts that will modbomb me for a few weeks until they get bored and move on.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Maybe "lead by example".
My daughter used to sit with me while I watched the original "COSMOS", and she would hear me excitedly talk about space missions, changes in what we know about, and the big things we didn't really understand. By the time she was 10, and already heavily interested in math, she told me "You know, I want to be the one who figures out what dark matter and dark energy really are." Also, at a young age, my daughter was introduced to several good friends of mine who are women in the sciences; An MIT mathematics professor, a former nuclear physicist and NASA scientist, and someone who is an astronomer. These women all have families, all are moms, all do "normal" stuff, but also all happen to have careers in science.
Does that mean my daughter will likely become a scientist? Well, she's fifteen now, and while she still loves math and astronomy, she's also become fascinated by Latin, and loves the language and history. Maybe she'll be a historian, or maybe hell, she'll be a hair dresser. But if SHE makes the choice of what she wants to do and be, if I don't make that choice for her and she's at least aware that she's got options, that's all I care about.
Every time she says things like "I want to be a princess!", make a face and say: "pfff, princesses are DUMB! They go they live their whole lives without achieving anything of importance; nobody cares about princesses". Make sure she sees you proud of her, other kids or other adults who achieve any kind of intellectual success: "Wow! Tommy is just four but reads like a 6 year old, isn't it great?".
Things like that. Children that age want their parents to be proud of them and will set aside any fantasy if they believe you think it's stupid, and they will give everything to try and make you proud. Instead of applauding everything she does, make a face when she does "dumb girly things" and let her know (overly and thoroughly) how proud you are when she does something intellectual. Don't congratulate her for being "pretty", congratulate her for being "smart". If she focus on being smart she will grow up smart, and smart people like smart things.
Wanting to be a princess requires imagination and a desire to play with (and invent) scenarios. To say "What if?". It's what the best scientists do. They imagine things, then they make them happen.
If this guy wants to deny his child that activity, he's not an engineer himself, he's a manager, and a particularly crappy one, too.
fail, made comment got eatten anyway encourage / help her be whatever she is interested in the time point out marketers are trying to sell things and will neglect people /lie to do it if she asks or shies away from stuff but son't push
find community like defcon rootz etc she can find her people in/with
i am a girl and work in IT and mom and dad are not into computers at all but enabled and encouraged me to do whatever i wanted
He's talking about 'encouraging' his daughter to be a scientist.
Why?
Because every other fucking slashdot story is about how "we need more women scientists"....a position developed and maintained entirely by meme, unsupported by facts.
Actually some data suggests that programmers, engineers, scientists tend to be a touch OCD about their preferences throughout life, leading them to prioritize these rather "hard" subjects over other things early on, other than, say, social development (thus the stereotype of nerd=science). Girls seem to prefer social development, thus, they tend not to direct to these fields unless highly motivated.
So the social pressure at work here is a father who thinks his daughter "ought" to be anything. Particularly at 4 - that's fucked up.
-Styopa
Must be that moment parents realize that society and the media have greater sway over their children than they do, must suck, and of course very difficult to avoid.
Should serve up a warning though about who we let tell our stories.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
For the record, my 4 year old son wants to be a pirate (of Jake and the Neverland Pirates ilk). And his twin sister does like princesses.
Not to promote TV, but check out Phineas and Ferb. Very science oriented and both my kids love it (as do my wife and I, Ferb TV was the best episode in my opinion). It's on Netflix streaming. It's a clever show, with some depth that parents can appreciate (how are the kids related?).
I have watched it without the kids...
BlameBillCosby.com
How many 4-year olds male or female want to be a scientist or engineer when they grow up? Plenty of boys want to be things like firemen, astronauts, soldiers, pro athletes, etc. who don't eventually enter those fields. I'm a software developer and I never wanted to be a software developer growing up. Then again I was born in the 70s, so it wasn't on a lot of peoples' "radar" career-wise when I was a small child.
Since my girls were young (3+), I've given them a "Math Problem of the Day". I always tried to come up with something that was fun and age appropriate. It never required pencil and paper, but did require at least a few seconds of though. They really seemed to enjoy the challenge and would ask for their "Problem" as soon as I got home in the evening. I was really more concerned about the girls learning other things than math, such as: (1) math can be fun, (2) math problems can be approached as puzzles, (3) a little effort can be rewarded, etc. They are in high school now. The oldest one is taking AP calc and AP physics as a senior and the younger one will be taking those classes next year. They both love math and physics (we are fortunate to have very good teachers in our public school) and are leaning toward college majors in math, physics or engineering. The oldest one got a perfect score on the math portion of the SAT. (The younger one has not taken the test yet.) They are both straight A students. They have competed and done well in a couple of different robotics competitions. They are both in Math Club. They compete in Math Bowl. Etc (Sorry, this appears to be me bragging about them and it probably is.) I am sure that there are a number of reasons that my girls appear to be headed toward careers in math and science (1) my wife and I are both engineers, (2) I also read a lot to them when they were younger (Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter) and there is still more reading activity than TV watching in the house, (3) we have always playing board games/cards as a family, and so on. BUT, the youngest one wrote in an essay (in an application for engineering summer camp) that she believed that the "Math Problem of the Day" helped to inspire her love of math. It may all be a big roll of the dice, but I would encourage you to try something like the "Math Problem of the Day" and see were it leads. I don't see how it can hurt. Good luck. As a side note: The Problem helped me notice differences in reasoning and personality at an early age. The oldest is very analytical and probably has a deeper understanding of math than I do (when she explained her solutions I was often left shaking my head in amazement). The youngest one is very intuitive (her creative solutions had me shaking my head in amazement also). These differences were apparent at an early age and are still present (and will probably always be present). Difference in learning styles
Don't just focus on "science" or you'll kill all interest. History is just as important. Science of itself isn't nearly as interesting as adding the human side to it. The stories of how the great ideas of our times came about and how those ideas have been used can make the knowledge come to life in a way that science by itself cannot.
Stop buying your daughter princess shit. I have a 19 month old daughter. How many princesses does she have, ZERO. How many disney cartoons does she watch ZERO. She runs around the house playing with tons of toys. We read to her every day. She doesn't watch cartoons, we don't buy her pink anything.
If your suffering this problem, you created it. It's hard to fight off the social stereotypes but it's totally doable. Man the fuck up and own your own problem.
Sadly most young girls are obsessed with clothing and cosmetic products. And frankly there is nothing more likely to ruin a girl than going down that path. Look at the term model closely. Would you rather own a model car or a real car? Girls are socialized to be observable. Their culture involves how they look and not what they are. The Kahn Academy might be a great place to park your young girls to complete mini courses.
I wanted to be a ballerina when I was 4. I even wanted to be a ballerina when I was 8. Now I'm a grown woman in a technology career.
I think we're drawing a few too many conclusions from the desires of 4 year olds.
If that was the case wouldn't we pay them better?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The monkey studies on this was really interesting. The same toy disposition even effected sexes of monkeys, repeatable in more than one study. It proves that there's a biological aspect behind this predisposition. Of course, we're all wired differently and that doesn't mean everyone SHOULD have those same predisposition, it just explains why a 'normal' behavior exists.
Your child is in your CARE but not in your OWNERSHIP.
I am dead serious. What this means is that a parent's job
is not to attempt to manipulate the child toward becoming what
the parent wants the child to be. The parent's job is to HELP the
child become whatever the child wants to become. Don't be
an asshole and try to force your kid to do something the kid
has no interest in -- that is one of the best ways to fuck up
a young human being, because usually the child will go along
with it since the child is usually eager to attain the approval of
his or her parents.
Stand back and let your daughter become who SHE wants to be,
and let that process occur naturally, as it should.
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My 4 y/o daughter loves making things, robots, planets, rockets and has an interest in biology. A couple months ago a friend showed her a new toy, she was all interested. She asked if he made it. He said no, she replied "awww" and immediately lost interest.
As a baby I took her to local maker meetings that met in a workshop where people showed off whatever projects they were working on. She used to just sit in her carrier and look around at all the tools, parts and stuff lying around. At that age with their brains developing as they are they pretty much soak up any sort of visual stimulation. Of course she had all the usual bright plastic or plush baby toys that most kids get to look at but she also had a machine shop! I quit taking her when she got a bit older and couldn't sit still and quiet for that long but I think it left an impression on her development.
Since she first learned to talk I have tried to answer all of her questions with how things really work. I try to explain it in a way that keeps it interesting too.
For example:
"why is it getting dark, why is it getting night?" Well... we live on a really really (arms held wide) big ball. See the sun over there? That's what makes it light. We don't feel it but it's spinning really really fast.You know how cars go really fast. Well.. that is nothing compared to how fast the Earth is spinning. See that house over there, see that tree. Those are big and look like they could never move. Well.. they are moving too but we don't see it because we are moving. Yup, we and everything around us is moving faster than even a car goes. Anyway.. you asked why it is getting dark. See the sun over there? As our ball, the Earth is spinning our side of it is turning away from the sun. We will be in the dark because the sun is on the other side of the ball. But.. you know what.. there are people on that side too. While we had our night they had their day. Now it's their turn and they will have day while we have night.
My Dad once heard me explaining something or other to her, I don't remember what and accused me of taking all of the magic out of it for her by removing the mystery or something like that. Really? If you really look at how the universe actually is what kind of kid story would be more fantastic than living on the skin of a giant ball flying at unimaginable speeds around a ball of fire that dwarfs even that? Living on the backs of turtles?
Answers like this will lead to many more questions. Keep answering. It's hard to tell what you will end up talking about before it is over. It's kind of like getting sucked into Wikipedia.
Use the internet. I like to show her pictures of the things I explain to her. Often we would end up sitting together at the computer and I would search Google images for whatever we were talking about. When she started showing an interest in planets I showed them to her using Celestia too. Now she asks to "go look at planets" but what she really means is go look at pictures on the internet. She will tell me what she wants to see pictures of, planets, robots, cells and I will show them to her. She loves videos too so long as there are short and preferably animated. Here's one she really loves http://youtu.be/B_zD3NxSsD8.
Speaking of watching things, we watch a lot of Phineas and Ferb. I also made a DVD for her with videos I downloaded from Youtube. She can watch it when she is not with me and she loves it! It is a mix of space and electronics stuff. The space part takes a historical arc, it starts with a Saturn V launch is one track then videos of the first moon landing then splashdown, a shuttle launch, an iss docking, a shuttle landing. I edited each video to keep them short. Gotta remember, kids attention span. In between each is something that is not space, I don't remember what all I used, I know Adafruits Circuit Playground is part of it.
Speaking of Circuit Playground, she loves it! I though it would be too che
Of course she wants to be a princess. She is a four your old girl. My daughter wanted to be a princess at 4, too. Today she is 12. In a STEM focused school and just did her seconded FLL Lego Robotics competition. She is active in her school's TSA (Technology Student Association) and competes in various science contests. She is two years ahead in math and wants to pursue a STEM career. Her favorite color is pink; she likes to wear dresses and did all the girl related toys. It is ok for a girl to like princesses and pink and all the frivolous stuff. Dolls don't turn you against science and math. But we also pushed science related stuff on her early. We bought lots of those science kits for kids and did them with her. Dumped a ton of lego’s on her. I spent many evening building lego’s and doing science kits and physics kits and volcano kits and walking fields, looking at rocks, ect. What you need to do is spend time with your daughter at an early age doing science kits, and looking at the environment and poking at rocks and asking questions of her to get her to think. As a dad, best think you can do is spend time with your daughter and guide her to thinking about her surroundings and what not. But don’t take away the girly toys; Let her be a girl because it’s ok to be a girl and be into science and technology. Don’t think you need to turn your girl into a boy to get her into science.
Wow, with a mother like that it's likely I'll not want to work anywhere near her daughter. .. something about expecting people to work the same amount and leave others the f. alone to do what they use to love and now just standing .. because of the hell this crap brings to a work force of serious fucking people. .. again.
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I've experienced that BS and no one should have to try to work creative technical thinking work and be subject to that crap - because all the f.ing managers are pussies and you will fucking leave (or wish to God you could.)
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Don't f.ing ask me why
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Assholes, the lot of them.
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And perhaps this is how this hell starts, and someone should say - leave you daughter alone and keep your twisted male-hate sexuality away from her and from us all.
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Then. Then perhaps people might start to want to go to work
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Peace.
But is that really an answer to "How do I get my 4 year old girl to be a programmer?" It was one woman's quick take on feminism, and not a central idea to her rambles.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
A lot of the posters here will tell you there's nothing you can do. But they haven't been there. My dad was a physicist, specializing in under-water accoustics. And he could have talked about "science" to his five daughters until the cows came home. But he was also a man who could literally charm birds out of trees. So he didn't focus on science and technology, he lured us with with wonder and curiousity. We weren't given "sciencey" toys and expected to play with them as is so often done. Dad shared HIS toys and allowed us to play along and discover their properties. What kind of toys? Magnifying glasses, fresnel lenses, siphon tubes, water, slinkies, yo-yos, levers, bottles - basically anything that caught his fancy. Dad had the simplest, coolest toys and not one of them was pink. Looking back, I think his children were also his toys. He played with and studied us, asking all kinds of open-ended questions. He graphed our fevers and measured our heights. He would show us the data and ask what conclusions we might draw. He probably recorded our answers and studied those too! Anything and everything was subject to study, even a hitchhiker concealing something in a paper bag was subjected to an interview, with me relocated to the back seat dying of adolescent embarassment. This was just the way my father was and I think he just assumed we'd be interested in discovering the world's secrets. Mom helped by sending us outside to run the neighborhood and woods. I don't recall her ever expressing worry for our safety although I'm sure she worried. But her indifference to minor injuries and confidence we could cope with most circumstances allowed us to develop a mental and physical toughness and, more importantly, learn the value of independence. The girls I ran with had a mother with a similar philosophy who encouraged tomboy play by telling tales of her own escapades. No one had to tell me that being an Amazon is way better than being a princess! In their own ways, both parents were showing us we were smart and capable and could set an independent course. Yes, there were boundaries. And there were inconsistencies, they weren't perfect. Did this work? For me it did. Early on I wanted Lincoln Logs, a year or two later, a microscope. When the school system finally allowed girls to take shop I was the first to signup. I got an engineering degree and work as an engineer today. My favorite toys are tractors and I continue to play with and study my Dad's "toys". But there's no guarantee even with that effort. My sisters are all independent, curious, thinking women but not working in STEM. Maybe it was my hellion playmates that made the difference, or maybe it was my shop teacher, who told me out of the blue "You're going to be an engineer".
In fact there really aren't many job opportunities in the princess career path.
But there might be some interesting issues behind the present day fixation on some of the hyper feminine stereotypes going on these days.
Back in the late 70's, when many women were entering the job force in careers that were traditionally held by men, I noticed that many women had the concept that you came in, worked a few years, then moved up into a job where you coasted. It was the idea of a career as a sprint, not a marathon.
That was a nasty surprise, I think, that the jobs they worked so hard to get, and that the equality they gained with men had a downside. But women probably entered the workforce with some unrealistic expectations. I had a lot of female friends and colleagues who burned out.
The world of men wasn't quite the wonderful place some might have imagined. Look at it this way. A lot of men I know think that once you reach a certain level of management, you don't actually work any more, you just sit back and coast until your golden parachute opens. Probably the same for women who were until that time more constrained in job choice. The "Grass is greener on the other side" outlook.
Now imagine many women, who had wanted the opportunities that men had, because men's lives must be better, right? So they rightfully got those opportunities, but found out that perhaps the 9-5 slog with 2 hours commute each way, wasn't necessarily the Nirvana they thought it was.
So fast forward to today, where there are a lot of stay at home fathers, and the woman is the breadwinner. Women are just as much told they need to be in the workforce in some career, so I suspect many who lould like to stay at home feel pressure against it. There are several stay at home dads on the street I live on, and to a man, they love being a stay at home father. There are worse fates.
This is all to say that the daily grind isn't all it's made up to be, and that wanting to be a princess, is not all that surprising. It's a great lifestyle if you can get it.
So father, your daughter has opportunities a lot of women did not have in earlier times. If she wants to be a chemical engineer, or a plumber, she can. But a princess is also in that mix. My guess is that eventually she won't want to be a princess, and drift toward a field with better employment opportunities.
But she's got free will, so don't mess with it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Why does your child have to be a scientist? How is this any better than a 20 year old boy whose parents want him to be a doctor and who disown him because he chooses to be a musician?
As a father of seven children, I believe you'll make better parenting decisions if you learn to let go, and spend lots of time deliberating and negotiating with your wife so that the wisdom of both of you can be brought to bear. If you really want your children to be counter culture in some way, and you are both enthusiastic about it, you might look into homeschooling.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I blame Beverly Cleary... for my inability to drive without at least occasionally making a "vroom vroom" sound.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Did you took into account possiblity that she just wants something else? Isn't 4 years old a bit too early to force kid's carrier/interest/hobby choices? How ever, about showing het options what is possible, I think indeed just letting people with computer with tools to *create stuff* some games where you can design things.
How about a Kickstarter project for a new coloring book, "Her Highness Builds Robots: Princesses for the 21st Century"?
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...
You must have met my niece at engineering school. Stay the hell away from her!
Role models will be the deciding factor. Having a mother who programs and a father who programs, especially if you include her in your computer time, will be a major help.
Then again, some people just don't like it. My oldest, 19 now, is incredibly good at math (though she doesn't like it) and science but her focus is on the "softer" side of things. She wants to work with animals, zoology type stuff, so not a complete lack of science but not the hard focus engineering puts on it. At the same time she's grown up fixing cars and building things right alongside of me. She enjoys that but it's not her passion.
In the end, the best thing you can do is expose your kids to a wide option of possibilities and teach them to make their own decisions and that if they don't like something after a few years they can change their mind again and try a different path.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
You do realize that gender reassignment surgery only modifies the body, not the brain, right?
I assume you do, but it's also the best *proof* we have that yes, they are really actually different (on average) in ways other than physical: there are a good handful of studies of individuals which, either due to mutation or botched surgery as infants or both, were born as one gender but raised from infancy as the other. Despite being treated by everyone as the gender they appeared to be, they all invariably acted as you would expect of the gender they were born as, and all announced (sometimes as early as 5 years old) that they felt they were that gender.
Obviously, yes, gender roles are both partially socially constructed, and the parts that aren't, are only true on average, not across the board. Just because more guys are natively interested in programming for its own sake than girls, doesn't mean there aren't still plenty of girls who are also natively interested in programming.
So I do completely agree, we do need to stop feeling like we *have* to have full equality of everything. What we need is a world where a female can feel like yes, if she finds programming interesting, she can totally major in it and get a job in it. If she doesn't find programming interesting and would rather do something "traditional" like go into design or whatever, she should also totally be able to do that, too, without anyone eye-rolling or complaining about it. If that means the IT workforce is still going to be 70% male? Fine, that's not our fault. (As long as we aren't *discouraging* women from joining it who would have wanted to. (Or, obviously, actively preventing them from joining it, which I understand is still at least *occasionally* an issue, usually in the guise of "fitting in", which is BS.))
SMBC
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Good luck to your daughter in college--it sounds like she will be well prepared.
My niece is kind of in the same boat as the OP, and I don't take offense at his question. I would love to foster my niece's sense of discovery in science or math, and I have decided that music is a good middle place we can share together... there's loads of science and math in music. About a year after she was born I got a great deal on a star projector that has slides for various astronomical objects and features -- obviously, at a year old, I knew it would have no appeal. At some point, maybe once she's out of kindergarten or 1st grade, stuff like stars will be more meaningful and I can give her the projector and know that she can make a little sense out of what it can show, but I'm not going to force it. (I'm thinking about getting here a microscope, maybe, when she's in 4th grade or so.) I do, however, try to model for her those behaviors that are not gender normative, so that she can see that boys can do the dishes and clean up the kitchen and cook and set the table and iron and do laundry and all that. Her dad does a great job of all that stuff, too, so I think about it more like re-enforcement of where he's going.
Anyhow, even though my niece is fond of princess dress-up and singing and dancing, I don't really see it as an end, or her only preoccupation. I don't see any reason why she can't be an astronomer princess or a biologist princess or an auto mechanic princess or a doctor princess or a lawyer princess or an electrician princess or an HVAC technician princess or an engineer princess. There are scads of different kinds of princesses out there. I think girls pick up on the girly gender roles very early and we can't stop that. Same goes for boys. Yeah, there are going to be people in-between, too, but rather than see gender-normative roles as exclusive, I figure that for kids they are probably just backgrounds for imaginary play -- loaded with all kinds of baggage, maybe, but not real barriers as long as I can help show her (& her mom & dad, too) that I don't see them as barriers or make assumptions about her as a result of them.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
My daughter wanted to be a princess when she was four years old too. So what? I let her be a princess however much she wanted. I also included her in my more manly outings. I took her with me when I went hunting or fishing, or to a baseball game, gun show, and even the barber. I taught her how to shoot, how to do minor car maintenance, and basic home improvement. I got her involved in things that are typically more masculine. Nevertheless, when she wanted to be a "princess", I did not discourage that ("You want to be Tinkerbell for Halloween? No problem"). She learned to be comfortable around men and not feel alienated in male-dominated venues, while at the same time feeling free to be as "girly" as she liked. She never got interested in coding, but she is a very successful chef (a male-dominated industry) and married a chef.
My advice: let your four year old daughter be whoever she wants to be. And if you want her to compete in a male-dominated world, then spend time with her and include her in your activities.
Proverbs 21:19
It's *all* anecdote. Why are her's less valuable? That central idea, research and sense of perspective you talk about is "tech guys don't like gals", "I'll craft my questions and cull the answers" and "there, I've proven my incoming bias".
There is no spoon. It's the question that's at fault.
role models you can chat to her about if asked http://realwomenofstem.com/
but the salary tends to be royal.
No that was the answer to why you're incapable of recognizing that HedgeMage answered "how do I get my 4 year old to be a programmer" and did not make any "rambles" or whatever other negative dismissal you want to make of her well organized and clear message about girls, kids, and software.
Your problem is that you not only don't know what spoons are but your entire worldview and ideology is incapable of recognizing that such a device COULD exist. To you the very concept of an eating utensil inherently excludes spoons... So when you ask why your eating utensils don't work for shit when it comes to soup and get answers you think are nonsensical the problem here is you, not the people saying "use a damned spoon".
HedgeMage answered your question, you just can't wrap your head around the idea that anything OTHER than some vast gender conspiracy is at work here. To you the very concept of the problem inherently requires it. So when you ask "How do I get my 4 year old girl to be a programmer" and someone points out the answer is the same way you get ANYONE to be a programmer, and that your gender FUD is counter-productive and harmful, you think you're getting a garbage answer when the problem is really your inability to accept the answer.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
that girls and boys/men and women are identical except for plumbing, you are going to have a bad time. There is far more to our gender differences than mere marketing and stereotypes.
I say expose your kids to as many different things as you can, and let them figure out what they like or are good at. I tried ridiculously hard to get my son interested in computers and geeky things from a very early age. At 21, he is now a car mechanic and loves football and UFC. Go figure.
Necron69
So basically, you don't have any conclusive scientific evidence so you simply claim that it is, 'rediculously obvious [sic]," and leave it at that?
What is, "rediculously obvious", is that there are a myriad of cultural factors that discourage women from pursuing certain fields such as engineering, physics, and computer science. This is backed up by some pretty compelling quantitative evidence, such as the decrease of participation of women in CS programs in the United States (unless you want to believe that the "girly" genes of the female population magically increased in a span of one generation).
Now, absent these cultural factors, would half of nurses be men and half of programmers be women? It is impossible to say with the evidence we have before us. There COULD be congenital factors to the gender disparity, but it is important to note that the possibility of something existing is not the same as it actually existing.
What we do know is that there exist significant cultural factors that discourage women (and men) from taking on certain roles in society. This is backed up by significant scientific evidence. The "nurture" claim is not.
From a practical standpoint, the nature versus nurture argument is meaningless anyway. We don't know whether or not nature keeps women from taking on certain roles in society and even if it does, there is little we can do about it. We do know that nurture keeps women (and men) from taking on certain roles in society, and that is something we can work to correct.
Doesn't that say it all?
She can have her castle and her laboratory. And the Universe as her demesne.
She could get the Prince and the Doctor.
Who? A Doctor Prince. Or perhaps a Doctor formerly known as a Prince.
me. --a by-product of public education
. . . should stay away from doing science. Using science and doing science are two very different career fields.
Engineer: Based on my experience . . .
Scientist: Based upon rigorous examination of the data modeled by a Poisson distribution, we conclude to within a five sigma error . . .
It's been my experience that children are always telling stories. Playing with actions figures, dolls, whatever form they come in, ends up being about something. I would suggest that you hook into the narrative she is already telling (princesses!) and start to infuse it with the things you'd like to see. Add in a female character that is a wizard (scientist). Have her do experiments while the princess worries about princess things like her hair. Eventually, I will predict, your daughter will take an interest in what you are focusing on. But this requires time spent in directly interaction with the child at their level, doing what they want to do, letting them lead the narrative, but being a crafty adult and sprinkling it with pointers to the paths you'd like her to take.
That is a beautiful lesson. It think it is worthwhile to always ask children if they want to help. I was asked constantly growing up, partly because it was a rural life and everyone had to help.
The only answer is: the little girls themselves.
Any other response is about trying to force or manipulate a developing human being's process of discovering themselves. Fuck that.
If she already wants to be a princess, there is no way you can suddenly change that. She wants to be a princess because of all the children's crap she was exposed to until now. Fairy tales and such bullshit. We feed so many lies and crap to our children no wonder they grow confused. And it's still considered the sensible thing to do. We lie so much to our children and we don't understand why they start to hate us when they become able of more critical thoughts and don't just believe everything mommy says. We think we lie because they couldn't understand the truth. But it's still better if they get the truth and can't fully understand it than feeding them some insidious lie. Yes you'd think it's harmless enough with your decades of life experience, but when the child finds out about them their world crumples and they can start learning everything all over again. If you want your children to be clever, don't lie to them, and don't feed them fairytales.
Why doesn't Auerbach buy her the Barbie book "I Can Be a Computer Engineer"?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Parents often are complicit in this: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id... The recent "Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer" book farce is another good example.
Why can't a scientist be a princess?
Perhaps this is part of the problem with the shortage of women in STEM. We tell girls they need to make a choice, they can either be girly and feminine or be an engineer. What woman or girl wants to be the stereotypical geek they see on TV? An antisocial person that stays at home in the basement eating burritos and playing on the computer? Does this mean she has no place in the technology fields? NO.
If a woman wants to work in the lab all day, then go put on a dress and go out for a night on the town, then great! The problem is, that is not how we as a society picture a scientist or engineer.
Unfortunately, some entities remove the choice from them. For younger kids, identities are formed when they learn the "rules" of how things operate. They learn what box to put themselves in. This happens for gender itself, likes, dislikes, how to look, how to act.
I do sysadmin/helpdesk work at a private school. When I have to troubleshoot connectivity at a student's computer, I give them a simplified explanation and logic loop of things to try themselves. If the problem is more difficult and I take over, I use slashdot as my "does the internet work now" page, and.... leave it open when I leave, on purpose (true story)
I used to be the type to gripe about "*#$%$#!^ has to be pink for every girl, if I had a girl, she won't wear pink", which is wrong too. As someone else pointed out here, if someone is "girly-girl" type in some ways, that and the things they do don't need to be mutually-exclusive.
For the first 16 years of someone's life, they learn the "rules", then after that they learn which ones are ok to break. The dumb rules ought to be broken a lot earlier!
I was once washing my clothes in a laundromat, and saw a good-looking young woman, wearing fairly revealing clothing, working on her physics homework. If I hadn't been already married to a wonderful (and very intelligent) woman, I would have spent some time trying to figure out how to open a conversation (my social skills lag behind my physics).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Last night my 17 year old daughter comes home and announces that she wants to learn to code. I'm astonished since I have been trying to get her interested in coding for years. I, of course, ask her why. She informs me in excited tones about the Google giving out stickers and bracelets and a website called Made with Code. But especially stickers and bracelets. It would never have occurred to me, but maybe giving out trinkets is a way to get girls interested in coding.
First cent: Honestly, it doesn't matter what the dad wants his daughter to be, nor does it matter that the daughter's current fascination is princesses. Encourage her to be whatever she wants to be, and be a bad-ass at it. Second cent: My parents did me many favors growing up, from helping me understand how the world works to making me fix the things I've broken, below ive summarized what anyone could do with their child to become what they want with a stable set of skills that will always be useful. For pointers on helping the daughter think critically and logically: 0) help her be comfortable in her own skin, always 1) any and all questions she has, give her the real answer in words shell understand, but never over simplify 2) encourage her to read, read, and read. 3) make sure legos, building blocks, tinker toys, and/or linking logs are readily available and in good supply. This way, her princesses have an excellent castle to live in. 4) encourage her imagination. help her write down the stories she comes up with, make up brand new bedtime stories with her, draw, etc. 5) give her a white board to "play" with. this will help if she has any frustration with building exactly what she wants with whatever she has. 6) when shes older, give her an old broken sewing machine and help her fix it. you get to help her fix something she will value, and you can have her mend her own clothes. 7) she wants a tree house? give her some graph paper and say "design it" 8) fixing something around the house? make her the gopher. shell love to help, and pick up a few things along the way. I hope this helps.
Well I'm a girl and I'm a programmer. I grew up with Barbie dolls and tv and internet and also had lego and cars. I wanted to be a princess. And then an astronaut. And then a model. And then there was this short time I wanted to be a designer. But as I grew up I chose what I liked best after trying out a bunch of stuff. And well I liked math and science stuff and no one told me what I should like. And this whole time my parents fully supported me to do what I want. They did not try to make me a programmer, or a doctor, or a lawyer or anything. They just let me pick my own path. And it ended up being a programmer because this was what I liked. And while I seem to represent a minority as it is constantly pointed out, I just wish people would stop thinking of programmers in terms of girl programmers and boy programmers. Feels like it just makes the difference stronger. So I say just let your kid do what she finds pleasing. And enjoy her being happy in following her own path. And by the way, I still dream of being a princess of a far far away galaxy... Does that make me a bad programmer?