Sure, Kid, We Can Talk About Anything. Except Math.

When my daughter informed she would be not be homeschooling after all, one of the many little sighs of relief I exhaled was that I wouldn’t have to teach her algebra, or even addition.

As a bright kid, I was always “gifted” at math, but that didn’t mean I liked it. By the time I hit high school, I’d gotten the message that being good with numbers wasn’t cool for a girl, so I shirked it. When it came time to go to college, I chose a school that did not require any math classes.

Now my stepson is 15, and I can’t even read his math homework, let alone help him solve it.

Happily, I saved my kids from a lifetime of math cluelessness by marrying a professional nerd who teaches math and physics at a university. In our house, he is the math department.

When Lisa Belkin broached this topic over on Motherlode, commenters pointed out the gender disparity between men and women around math. Lisa’s family, like mine, is headed by a math averse mom and a math friendly dad.

I’m trying to do more math for the girls’ sake. I want my girls to grow up knowing women can do just as much math as men. But let’s be real: I can pull this off now because the oldest one is 5. She is hard at work learning to count to 100. When she starts bringing home differential equations, she is going straight to Daddy.

Two recent studies show that most American parents are a lot like me when it comes to math homework: clueless and uncomfortable. One commissioned by Intel shows that parents feel more equipped to talk about sex and drugs with their kids than math and science. Another, by Sylvan Learning, found that more than 6 out of 10 parents are not confident that they can solve their kids’ math homework in middle and high school.

Those jitters about math homework translate to kids, who start to feel nervous about the subject themselves. Math is increasingly important for higher education and professional fields, but most adults rate it as the most challenging subject taught in school.

For good reason. Less than 40% of eight and fourth graders are “proficient” or better at grade-level math skills. Clearly our kids could use some help with their math homework.

Do you help your kids with their homework? Does the thought of having to go through high school algebra again give you the shivers? If we can’t help our kids learn math, who can?

Photo: tracy_the_astonishing

Should Boys be Allowed to Wear Skirts?

Back in the age of the dinosaurs, aka 1995, I went to prom with a charming young man. I wore a long, lacy purple dress. He wore a black miniskirt and a baby-doll t-shirt with the words “Prom Queen” stencilled across the chest in frilly lavender script. Guess which one of us got to dance with the captain of the football team? Hint: it wasn’t me.

I guess we were trendsetters, because the New York Times now reports that schools are cracking down on kids’ cross-dressing to proms - or just to class. Are these teens finding a clever new way to stick it to the dress code, or just exploring their honest gender expression? Does it matter?

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How to Date a Disney Princess

We already got the skinny on how to be a Disney Princess (”skinny”, incidentally high on the list) now it’s the princes’ turn.

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Alternative, Lesbian and Eating Disorder Barbies (Maybe NSFW)

Bulemic Barbie

If Barbie, often little girls’ exemplar of womanhood, is to represent females, she needs to mix it up.

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This Toy is for Girls Only

Hey that’s the brand name. ‘Cause girls love to clean!

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The Boyfriend Jean is for Toddlers?

They’re too young to actually have boyfriends, but your four-year-old daughters can now have a pair of boyfriend jeans!

Because you really want to think about a boy getting into your pre-schooler’s pants, right? Continue reading »

Pink Tape Just for Girls And Other Strange Sexisms

Underwear. A potty seat with or without the splash guard. There are some things that are made to be marketed to separate genders.

And then there’s bubblegum pink tape made “just for girls.” Because nothing says girl’s best friend like her school supplies? Continue reading »

Bonding With Baby, Perhaps a Little Too Soon

Finding out the sex of your baby — as Jeanne recently pointed out in this post — can be a dicey proposition, for many reasons. But one key one? The sense of attachment we sometimes develop to our kids, even when they’re still in utero.

A reader to the New York Times Motherlode blog, Amanda Goehring, wrote a thoughtful letter to blogger Lisa Belkin about the bond she formed with her unborn daughter. Or rather, the daughter she thought she was having. Times blogger Belkin shared Goehring’s response in its entirety, in which she talks about her despair once she realized — courtesy of an ultrasound a few weeks before her due date — that the little girl named Lucille she believed to be growing inside her was actually a boy.

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Swedish Couple Keep 2-Year-Old’s Gender a Secret

Sometimes babies give off an androgynous vibe. Are they a boy or a girl? Many parents try to make it clear to one and all by dressing their child entirely in baby pink or bright blue. But one couple in Sweden? They want to keep people guessing. Continue reading »

Moms Suing Gender Predictor for Wrong Gender

Another day, another woman who apparently needs a lesson in how pregnancy works.

Keven Duffy blames a gender prediction test manufacturing company for the end of her marriage. They said she was having a boy - just like her husband wanted. Turns out, she was actually carrying a girl, and Duffy says the company’s at fault for the stress that led to divorce.

OK, she does realize she would have had a girl REGARDLESS of the test? Continue reading »