

Our daughter is into dolls and dress-up. What are programmer parents to do? - pron
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/12/women_in_tech_and_the_sciences_how_to_make_sure_your_daughter_knows_she.single.html

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choffman
My daughter also took to Barbie's and princesses. We weren't happy with it at
first, but we decided to accept it and encourage _diversity_ in playtime. So
we introduced Lego's, nerf swords, my old Capsela kit, and tons more.

So now we have a kid that plays princesses, begs us to go to the annual Ren
Faire and Comic Book Day, started building some basic programs/toys in
Scratch, and regularly beats down bosses in MMO's.

Strength through diversity.

~~~
gus_massa
I agree.

My daughter didn't play too much with real dolls, but she liked the games in
barbie.com and the dressing flash games. She also saw Disney princess movies
and magazines. She also had many cloths for her penguin in Club Penguin.

We also bough her many interesting scientific games, like the games you
described. I'll like to add a microscope and SnapCircuits (with a warning, the
electricity from the wall is much bigger than the electricity from the
battery).

Now she can program a little (she also program alone small script for
Minecraft blocks), can do simple calculus including straightforward
differential equations. But yesterday I was tacking with her about the 9 and
11 division rules and she didn't know the proof, so I think we have to talk
more about modulo arithmetic after she finish her school exams.

Let her play with dolls, but also give her interesting scientific activities.

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gcatalfamo
Frankly, there's nothing wrong if she prefers dresses and dolls.

Her friends at school will always influence her more than other sources should
and at some point she will be mature enough to make her own choices.

The lower number of female engineers doesn't have to be another kind of
pressure about what a girl should choose to be. A choice, sure, but hers to
take.

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kazinator
What are programmer parents to do?

Maybe they can download a different theme that can be installed on the small
human to customize its personality.

Workarounds are, of course, no substitute for investigating to find the root
cause. It could be a bug in the child's firmware.

I'd form a list of _all_ the issues, give them solid estimates, prioritize
them by customer impact, and, accordingly, assign them into project
milestones.

You know, maybe this dolls and princesses problem doesn't have to be solved in
the current release.

Customer visibility of the problem could be managed somehow; perhaps the
behavior can be confined to certain times and locations.

My gut feeling is that there maybe a priority inversion in the tiny human; the
incorrect temperament threads is taking over most of the cores.

~~~
pron
You clearly haven't read the article. They're not trying to shape their
daughter but protect her from forces that do try to shape her.

~~~
kazinator
The mistake is believing that there is a difference.

We have to live in this world, and this world has forces (external and
internal also).

Say you're protected from these forces all your life. You still end up shaped
somehow. The shaping hasn't gone away.

Protection is merely the flipside of interference.

~~~
pron
But those forces aren't forces of nature, and we have a duty to try and shape
society as we believe it should be. Accepting those forces as givens simply
means yielding power to those who do care to shape society.

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cafard
Well, you could take somebody who might do very well in another field--law,
medicine, education--and with careful pressure turn her into an unhappy
mediocre programmer (or any combination of <happy .. miserable> x <great ..
bad> programmer). Or you could consider, and I know this is hard for parents,
that your child is not yourself, and let your child figure it out.

~~~
pron
Have you read the article? They aren't concerned about her not turning out a
scientist or a programmer, but about the endless stream of social cues
pressuring her in an opposite direction. They want to _remove_ pressure so
that she's actually free to choose.

~~~
cafard
I hadn't. I have now, and my opinion has not much changed. I've been
acquainted with a few girls who went through the princess bit at about four
and got over it.

~~~
pron
The point is not about "getting over it" but about the fact that our society
constantly sends certain signals to women. Of course many women can get over
it, but that doesn't mean society shouldn't change the signals.

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bob917
You should admit defeat and buy her dancing lessons so she's prepared for her
onstage career.

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informatimago
Perhaps men really think with their dicks :-) LOL

Ok, but seriously, present her Princess Leia, and how she programs R2D2 to go
and deliver a message to Obiwan Kenobi.

Or otherwise, present her with true princesses, enclosed in their castles, and
sending (programming) knights to go to war to bring her riches. (Yes,
programming is messy, if not for the programmer/princess, for the
computer/knight doing the work). :-)

~~~
informatimago
Those Usians... no sense of humour!

