Don't dumb girls down

The point of gender issues isn't to say women shouldn't care about beauty, child care, or or emotional connections. The point is that women can choose to care about the realms of life you described as "masculine"- jobs, academic accomplishments, financial independence.

The problem with gender issues reveals itself when the activities and traits you traditionally classified by gender are enforced on individuals of that gender. When a young woman's boss passes her over for promotion because she is around the age many women decide to bear children. When a young man is mocked and humiliated for doing ballet. When a woman is declared selfish because she chose her career over staying home with children.

There are women who don't like children, and have no desire to raise one. There are men who would rather stay home and cook, clean, and raise children than have a "smart job".

Treating traits as "feminine" and "masculine", which is what happens when young boys are encouraged to look at cars and young girls are told to be pretty, sends the societal message to young girls that she cannot have a smart job, academic achievements and so forth because women don't do those things.

More than half of americans wear glasses.

Boys generally only hear that sort of statement from family members at family gatherings.

Young girls hear how pretty their dress or hair or smile is from just about anyone upon introduction. They are put into ballet classes where they learn to act pretty, into girl scouts where they do traditional arts and crafts rather than the camping and leadership that boy scouts focuses on, and are given play makeup until around ten or so when they are encouraged to learn how to put real makeup on. Many young girls know what dieting is, and start doing so in intermediate school- before they have even stopped growing. Young girls are supposed to behave appropriately as such, while loud, rude, and overly rambunctious behavior from boys are tolerated as "boys will be boys". All of this is anecdotal from my own experiences, but I believe to be true in many areas of the US.

The extent to which young girls are raised to be pretty is on a completely different level of young boys.

I would tend to agree, diversity being so fundamental to survival. Even in a futuristic world like Deus Ex where you can customize yourself at will, so long as we have biological components we will have biological weaknesses, and diversity is what helps mitigate those weaknesses.

Folks, this thread has a lot of confused thinking that is dangerous; we need the thinking in this thread to be more clear.

First reality check. There is an old remark about research in psychology, that all the results either (1) are solid science that, however, say next to nothing important about humans or (2) say something important about humans, however, are junk as science.

Similarly, for the main issue here, that is, for what is necessary in sex differences, for the role of nature versus nurture, etc., the results from solid science won't be very important and the very important results won't be solid science. Net, to address the issue scientifically, so far we are STUCKO. Sorry 'bout that.

Second reality check. On the issue of the OP, that is, how to treat girls, young women, and women, each person WILL necessarily take some position. That is, no one gets to decline to choose an answer. We MUST have an answer. We do not have the luxury of no answer, and, from the first reality check, the answer we take on the important parts of the issue will not be from solid science. Sorry 'bout that.

Solid science is great stuff. However, quite generally in life, we have to make decisions without solid science. Sorry 'bout that.

Third reality check. I can assure you that it is actually fairly easy to get things very wrong in treatment of females, and the consequences can be from awful down to fatal. I exaggerate not. I can use Google Earth to give you the coordinates of the tombstone. So, the issue here is SERIOUS.

There is a moral issue: Men don't want to be unfair or cruel to the females. So, here's a practical resolution: Give the girls plenty of opportunity. Give them dolls and also erector sets, white bedroom furniture and also a basketball goal, tell them they are cute, sweet, pretty, darling, adorable, and precious and also explain TCP/IP, DNS, and POP 3, encourage them in both English literature and physics, in both art history and solid geometry, have them help you make chicken salad and also put the snow tires on the car, mop the kitchen floor and also sweep out the garage.

Some people who have tried this practical resolution came to a conclusion: The little girls quickly, strongly moved toward the stereotype for cute, sweet little girls. They played with the dolls and ignored the erector set; they liked art history much more than solid geometry; they were eager enough to mop the kitchen floor but wanted nothing to do with the garage. They were much more eager to be a cooperative member of a group than to strike out on some curiosity driven, independent, creative investigation.

Important information about the girls? Yes. Solid science? No. Did I mention that quite generally in life, we have to make decisions without solid science?

But more is possible: If parents and society push and shove, keep telling the girls to 'perform' well at 'boy activities', then, girls, being eager to please and more obedient, often will. If push them to be independent, autonomous, assertive, self-sufficient, and equal and to resent dependency, passivity, membership, partnership, subservience, etc., then through, say, college, they will. My experience is that, then, too likely (granted, not always) you will find that you have created a VERY 'mixed up' young woman and a weak, sick, or dead limb on the tree and conclude that Mother Nature considered all such issues long before you did and that it's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.

Here's an easier approach: If only from an 'asymptotic' consideration, place value on her being a strong limb in the tree. Do a really good job taking care of her until can help her find a really good husband, and then help her husband continue to take very good care of her and her children. Have her be good as a wife and mother in a secure, strong family. This thought, perhaps now with feminism really offensive, is not original with me. Instead, in the "Foreword" to

Maggie Scarf, 'Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage', Random House, New York, ISBN 0-394-5585-X, 1987.

Dr. Carol Nadelson, past president of the American Psychiatric Association, wrote:

"Traditional marriage is about offspring, security, and caretaking."

If want her to be quite active between her ears and especially busy and productive, then emphasize to her and help her in how much there is to know about helping her children with their emotional, rational, psychological, social, artistic, physical, practical, verbal, quantitative, manual, scientific, technological, and creative problem solving development and understanding of history, business, the economy, people, groups, society, politics, etc., how far and away the most important influence on them, for their academic performance and nearly everything else, is the nurturing they get at home, and how important it is to build and have a secure, strong family and how she can play a central role there. Indeed, she might just take on doing a good job home schooling her children through, say, the International Baccalaureate program, high SAT scores, etc. Let the children get through the Beethoven piano sonatas and the Bach unaccompanied violin pieces, Rudin's 'Principles of Mathematical Analysis', Royden's 'Real Analysis', Breiman's 'Probability', and the 'Feynman Lectures on Physics' -- should keep them busy for a while!

What do you want? Lots of really healthy grandchildren or someone to sweep out the garage?