(12-19-2024, 11:58 AM)Bchbunnie4 Wrote: As enlightened as we have become “boys don’t like girls who are smarter than them, you’ll never get a husband like that” is still a prevalent thing among way too many people. It’s been only about 50 years or so where a woman could get her own checking account without a husband. Girls have just recently started to be pushed towards STEM programs.

Think about how you talk to little boys and little girls. Boys get told how smart they are, how strong they are, how clever they are. Girls get told how pretty they are. Of course not everyone does this, and it’s becoming less common because people realize how detrimental this kind of praise is, you I should say lack of praise is for little girls.

So dads on here, next time you tell your daughter she’s pretty, tell her how freaking awesome and smart she is too!

I'm involved with my two kids at church and at cub scouts.  I never heard anyone talk to the girls (and about 1/4 of the scouts are girls now) about how pretty or cute they are. That message has been received at least in my neck of the woods.

However the social scientists are raising alarm bells with Gen Z (who are in their 20s now) that the girls have absorbed the "get as much education and professional development as possible" message but the boys have not absorbed the "your partner may be more accomplished than you and that's OK" message.  Seems we recalibrated one of the genders without recalibrating the other.  

FWIW L2L and I both are with women who are more accomplished and higher earning than us.  But the polling consistently says that most younger unattached men don't want that for themselves.

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