Not surprising, but sad

Math is for boys? Children absorb stereotypes by second grade

By the time she hits second grade, your daughter has picked up plenty of subliminal messages. Just count the number of pink items she owns or how many of her movie and book choices focus on princesses.

A little less obvious are messages that detail what girls can and cannot do. A worrisome new study shows that second grade girls and boys have already absorbed stereotypes about math and reading -- and the girls have come to believe that math is not for them.

“We still don’t know from where the children are getting this,” says Dario Cvencek, the study’s lead author and researcher at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington. “I don’t think anybody is explicitly telling them that. I think it’s a very subtle message.”

The question is how to adequately counteract those messages. It seems parents can try all they want, and they still get through. I'm not a parent, and I don't deal with children on a regular basis, so I don't even know where to begin. But I wish parents well, because we really do need to counteract this. If the advertising folks and the media would get on board, it would certainly help.