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[RedKing]

There must be some natural foundation to why girls prefer dolls, and the explanation provided in the article makes sense - since the woman is the one breastfeeding and taking care of the infant, it makes sense to learn mothering skills like this.

Please explain my hatred of dolls using science.

Obviously you had abnormally high levels of testosterone as a fetus. Because evolution deemed that you should be a hunter instead of a gatherer. 

Regarding female mathematicians staying single, I always figured that applied to both genders, though I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

Not really.  Many of the great men in mathematics had wives and (loads and loads of) kids.  I'm especially thinking of Euler and so on.

Well...Goethe had a boatload of kids long before he actually got married. And he wrote slashfic. 
I'm not sure how that factors into the conversation, I just find it amusing.

[Kay12]

I'm a woman who bucks the trend.  I never liked dolls.  At all.

There must be a scientific explanation for this as part of your theory.  Otherwise I, being a slave to my biological need to feed hairless rats with my body after having housed the parasites in my body for nine months, would not have just written that sentence and would presumably like dolls.

That's what a biological imperative is.  Something that's programmed into you.

I never claimed it was a biological imperative, did I? No. did the study claim that? No, at least not according to the article.

[Nadaka]

Regarding female mathematicians staying single, I always figured that applied to both genders, though I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

For guys in many highly competitive fields it is very commonly said that they loose their "edge" or "drive" if they settle down. The way I see it, sacrificing the chance for a family is by far the worse choice for both men and women. That is very much not a gender specific issue. Though the disparity in expectations probably is, and the expectation for men isn't exactly positive.

[Vector]

And for women, if we settle down then we're basically dead in the water and worthless as anything other than "mommy."


According to that logic, though, all fertile women should like dolls, at least initially.

[ChairmanPoo]

Or not. There is room for individual variations

[Vector]

You're right.  I'm currently too angry and frustrated to actually talk about this.

[Gunner-Chan]

I dunno. A study like that makes sense mostly for animals since well, they're far more driven by hormones and instincts than well, people are. What makes an individual person like dolls or toy cars or playing with fireworks or whatever is far more complex. Honestly what's in your environment isn't even the only factor.

When I was little both for convenience since they were too poor to get me new toys and that they felt it would give them another little worker around the house I just got hand me downs from my brothers. I mostly had little cars, Gi-Joes, legos and other things I forget to play with. Yet I envied some girls at school with dolls or barbies and other more "Girly" things.

Eventually I got a plush alligator. It was the first stuffed toy I ever got. I loved and cherished it despite me practically being raised as a boy just because I loved it so much. It still sits beside my bed on the nightstand to this day, faded and near colorless by now. But it's still there and I still love it.

So really, I don't think for humans it's just environment or just biological concerns. I did enjoy the other toys too, but I did still want other different ones in ADDITION instead of to replace them.

[RedKing]

Regarding female mathematicians staying single, I always figured that applied to both genders, though I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

For guys in many highly competitive fields it is very commonly said that they loose their "edge" or "drive" if they settle down. The way I see it, sacrificing the chance for a family is by far the worse choice for both men and women. That is very much not a gender specific issue. Though the disparity in expectations probably is, and the expectation for men isn't exactly positive.

I'd argue that's it not so much the "edge" you lose as the flexibility. Once you have family commitments, your options are automatically constrained. Even marriage constrains your options somewhat. If it was just me, I could quit my job whenever I wanted, as long as I was willing to live with the consequences. Hell, I'd be living somewhere in China by now, finding work where I could. But I can't in good conscience drag a family through something like that. It's that need to provide stability and support that causes people with spouses and children to "lose their edge".

[Bauglir]

I feel like there's a problem with making statements like "Women prefer X" when the idea that, to give the benefit of the doubt, is probably trying to be conveyed is really, "Women tend to prefer X". Anything other than anecdotal evidence should actually be able to give some concrete statements as to the strength of that trend, as well; if a study comes out in which a majority of female participants preferred dolls (with a high degree of statistical significance), then chances are that that's all anyone's going to talk about, even if that majority was 50.1% (and so only significant in the statistical definition of the word, not the usual). That's definitely something that needs to be avoided as much as possible.

Ignoring that "tend to" changes the meaning subtly. Aside from the fact that it becomes a ridiculous overgeneralization, it also implies that it's a defining characteristic of what it means to be a woman; "Women prefer X. I do not prefer X. Therefore, I am not a woman." is logically valid, I'm pretty sure. This is the same problem behind statements like, "Women aren't mathematicians", which is a pretty obvious implication that could be drawn from looking at the set of well-known mathematicians, even though I'm nearly certain that this is due to social conditioning entirely.

[G-Flex]

Not very surprising: Choosing a lifestyle (or social role) that takes a lot of commitment can prevent you from taking up other roles or lifestyles that also require a lot of commitment.


Regarding mathematics: From what I understand (from, say, friends' experiences and what Toady has said) it's an extremely strenuous field that consumes a hell of a lot of your time, life, and mental efforts. I can definitely understand why someone who wants to devote themselves to it wouldn't want to have children or... much of anything else in their life, I guess, and I can also understand why anyone who wouldn't want to devote themselves that much would shy away from it. Christ, it's like being a mathematician almost requires you to be some kind of weird monk. It's no wonder things like amphetamines seem to be so popular amongst mathmos.

Personally, I could never do that. I can never see myself devoting my life to one thing to such a degree that I don't have enough flexibility to engage in normal social relationships.

[Kay12]

And for women, if we settle down then we're basically dead in the water and worthless as anything other than "mommy."

But is a human woman only "meant" for producing offspring? I don't think so. Women are fertile until their 50's, after which they still typically have a few decades to live. Most animals don't live past their fertile age - humans do, and by decades. Cultural evolution is the reason behind this, according to a... <tries to search> study I read somewhere.

[G-Flex]

Seems obvious to me why humans would live past fertile age: For one, it's advantageous to have older generations around for social reasons (us being social animals and all), and for two, we've largely done that ourselves via modern medicine and living conditions; I doubt a whole lot of people lived past 50 in the prehistoric era.

[Vector]

I would, but it's even lonelier when there's an obvious, impassable distinction between yourself and all the other students and teachers and the damned subject itself.

Feh.

And for women, if we settle down then we're basically dead in the water and worthless as anything other than "mommy."

But is a human woman only "meant" for producing offspring? I don't think so. Women are fertile until their 50's, after which they still typically have a few decades to live. Most animals don't live past their fertile age - humans do, and by decades. Cultural evolution is the reason behind this, according to a... <tries to search> study I read somewhere.

The fertile age for mathematicians is the same as the reproductive age for humans.

[RedKing]

Seems obvious to me why humans would live past fertile age: For one, it's advantageous to have older generations around for social reasons (us being social animals and all), and for two, we've largely done that ourselves via modern medicine and living conditions; I doubt a whole lot of people lived past 50 in the prehistoric era.

Umm...there's large swathes of sub-Saharan Africa today where most people don't even make it to 50.

I'm kinda wondering how this is all relevant to the inital spark, which was discussing the fairness/unfairness of paid maternity leave. Other than the notion that "But women like being mommies and guys don't," which is bullshit if we're talking some kind of evolutionary imprinting. It may be true in a broad, socially-conditioned sense (just look at the bevy of comedies where a *man* has to do the housekeeping and parental duties, because you know...guys can't clean or change diapers and they'll just give the kids beer) but it's far from a universal truth and it's insulting to both genders.

[MonkeyHead]

By far and away the most brilliant of my work friends is a male Mathematician who earlier in his career worked in Cambridge under Hawking. Alas, he fell in love and had kids, so moved to the relative rural backwater where we now both work. I strongly feel that this affects both genders, but society seems to make an effort to dictate how each gender should respond. The field you choose to work in probably either negates or amplifies this effect. I for one struggled to keep afloat workwise until both my kids were school age, and as already mentioned in this thread my partner and I made a choice where i would focus on being the breadwinner as opposed to a primary carer.

He also has a banana phobia, which might ruin any primate based experimental exploration of this idea .