I definitely think the men competing on Great British Bake Off qualify for this! I think baking/cooking/kitchen things are still seen primarily as "women's work" but they manage to have nearly a good 50/50 split most seasons, the men are just as competent and willing and wanting to do well (and do win fairly often), and are good role models for sharing the burden of food preparation equally in a home. They're competitive but not too competitive and they're all cheering each other on! Even the two hosts are a man and woman, both equally experts in their field!
Maybe not answering the questions directly, but a thought I've had is how many jobs are just.... invisible to children in general. The doctor and nurses, the garbage truck man, the HVAC technician, the librarians? Our young boys see those (and are obsessed with anything related to physical tools!) Do they see what my husband does (chemist working in nuclear medicine)? Nope. That would certainly be harder/impossible to wrap their minds around at this age. I've been thinking about how so much of work these days is "computer work" but kids are obviously better at seeing tangible, practical work!
Absolutely! I really don't think my daughter has any idea what I do, since it's so laptop mediated, while my husband's work is totally comprehensible to her, since she sees teachers all day. (She does assume that he and his high schoolers also have a nap and playground time, and tbh, it's not a bad idea!)
My kindergarten asked me what I do (I’m a social science researcher), and I said that I read and write things and use numbers. He said, “oh, just like me!”
Not exactly to your question, but I'm glad that I encountered the phenomenon that is Baby Sexism before I have kids myself. At 6 years old my little brother had definitely developed an attitude that girls didn't go on adventures or fight fights, to the extent of complaining that it was Not Okay that my fiance had girls on his team in a video game. I got knee-deep in fretting that my sweet angelic brother was turning into a redpilled incel misogynist and started drawing elaborate connections to the fact that his current read-aloud book (Prince Caspian) had a character use "womanish" as an insult once. When I shared these fears with my parents, their response was basically to laugh at me and remind me that apparently when I was that age I flat-out REFUSED to read books or watch movies that had a boy main character.
All this is to say: despite all of our best efforts, kids can conjure some pretty bizarre attitudes about gender, seemingly out of thin air. Most of them grow out of it :)
Personally I’d love to be a kindergarten teacher, but I’ve been told a million times from a million directions that teachers are underpaid and overworked. I loved when I had male teachers growing up, they were huge impacts on my life! But I don’t see much opportunity there, at least not while providing for my kids
That was definitely my husband's experience -- he was a teacher before we got married and loved the classroom-interaction aspect of it, but was constantly swamped in grading/paperwork, and also not earning nearly enough to support a family. He came to the conclusion that the school's business model depended on hiring (a) straight-out-of-college people who'd accept low salaries or (b) workforce-returning moms whose husbands already had family-supporting jobs and who could afford to work for the sake of the job rather than for a comparable second income. In other words, the teachers' salaries really weren't designed to be something you could do as a primary family breadwinner. Which was doubly unfortunate because being a male role model was one of the things my husband loved about the job! (Granted, this was a private church school, so the math might be different with public school salaries. But for what anecdotal evidence is worth, I think you're definitely right that low salaries are one reason for fewer male teachers.)
All my children are boys so far. I have never really thought about representation for them. Their main doctor is a man. They will see the woman if he is not available for some reason. My best friend is a male professor. I work in a trade adjacent job where I own the company so when they come to work they are surrounded my men in the trades. Our house swarms with books, both of my brothers are white collar an accountant and a computer programmer. The one area though where they lack male influence in in school. Daycare is all female and so far in elementary school has been all female and I do think it has hurt my oldest. The women teachers just don't understand the male mind. I am not knocking them as teachers but my son tests exceptionally high on math. In the highest percentile but the range is pretty broad. It is basically 90% and up. It would be nice to know if he was 90% percent or if he was 99%. I am actually shocked a bit if he ever misses a question in math and if he makes below a 95 on a math test it is basically a freak and he had the flu or something. With that being said they don't understand his desire to build and create. All he really wants to do is build a robot and there is no push in teh classroom to create and build and make the math applicable for him. Fortunately we live in a college town and the college offers stem camps in the summer and we can afford to allow him to create and build robots with kits we get him.
I wonder how many men wouldn't consider going into early education with the hysteria about male pedophiles. Can you hug a kindergartner if you are a man, or will that cause someone to call Child Services?
An unrelated comment, I think the chart in this post is a bit odd. It seems to have picked just four "caring" professions and I'm not sure why I should take those as representative. What about doctors, physician and nurse's assistants, daycare workers and nannies, high school teachers, physical therapists, etc.?
Of course the men are absent from certain professions, indeed they are increasingly absent from the public square in general. The educated, professional women want their husbands at home helping with the household and childcare! Middle and working class women don’t bother with men because the middle and working class men are unemployed, deadbeats relegated to the dust heap of history by the feminists.
I definitely think the men competing on Great British Bake Off qualify for this! I think baking/cooking/kitchen things are still seen primarily as "women's work" but they manage to have nearly a good 50/50 split most seasons, the men are just as competent and willing and wanting to do well (and do win fairly often), and are good role models for sharing the burden of food preparation equally in a home. They're competitive but not too competitive and they're all cheering each other on! Even the two hosts are a man and woman, both equally experts in their field!
Maybe not answering the questions directly, but a thought I've had is how many jobs are just.... invisible to children in general. The doctor and nurses, the garbage truck man, the HVAC technician, the librarians? Our young boys see those (and are obsessed with anything related to physical tools!) Do they see what my husband does (chemist working in nuclear medicine)? Nope. That would certainly be harder/impossible to wrap their minds around at this age. I've been thinking about how so much of work these days is "computer work" but kids are obviously better at seeing tangible, practical work!
Absolutely! I really don't think my daughter has any idea what I do, since it's so laptop mediated, while my husband's work is totally comprehensible to her, since she sees teachers all day. (She does assume that he and his high schoolers also have a nap and playground time, and tbh, it's not a bad idea!)
My kindergarten asked me what I do (I’m a social science researcher), and I said that I read and write things and use numbers. He said, “oh, just like me!”
Not exactly to your question, but I'm glad that I encountered the phenomenon that is Baby Sexism before I have kids myself. At 6 years old my little brother had definitely developed an attitude that girls didn't go on adventures or fight fights, to the extent of complaining that it was Not Okay that my fiance had girls on his team in a video game. I got knee-deep in fretting that my sweet angelic brother was turning into a redpilled incel misogynist and started drawing elaborate connections to the fact that his current read-aloud book (Prince Caspian) had a character use "womanish" as an insult once. When I shared these fears with my parents, their response was basically to laugh at me and remind me that apparently when I was that age I flat-out REFUSED to read books or watch movies that had a boy main character.
All this is to say: despite all of our best efforts, kids can conjure some pretty bizarre attitudes about gender, seemingly out of thin air. Most of them grow out of it :)
Personally I’d love to be a kindergarten teacher, but I’ve been told a million times from a million directions that teachers are underpaid and overworked. I loved when I had male teachers growing up, they were huge impacts on my life! But I don’t see much opportunity there, at least not while providing for my kids
There's also a historical phenomenon of professions *becoming* low-paying when women enter them in large numbers.
That was definitely my husband's experience -- he was a teacher before we got married and loved the classroom-interaction aspect of it, but was constantly swamped in grading/paperwork, and also not earning nearly enough to support a family. He came to the conclusion that the school's business model depended on hiring (a) straight-out-of-college people who'd accept low salaries or (b) workforce-returning moms whose husbands already had family-supporting jobs and who could afford to work for the sake of the job rather than for a comparable second income. In other words, the teachers' salaries really weren't designed to be something you could do as a primary family breadwinner. Which was doubly unfortunate because being a male role model was one of the things my husband loved about the job! (Granted, this was a private church school, so the math might be different with public school salaries. But for what anecdotal evidence is worth, I think you're definitely right that low salaries are one reason for fewer male teachers.)
All my children are boys so far. I have never really thought about representation for them. Their main doctor is a man. They will see the woman if he is not available for some reason. My best friend is a male professor. I work in a trade adjacent job where I own the company so when they come to work they are surrounded my men in the trades. Our house swarms with books, both of my brothers are white collar an accountant and a computer programmer. The one area though where they lack male influence in in school. Daycare is all female and so far in elementary school has been all female and I do think it has hurt my oldest. The women teachers just don't understand the male mind. I am not knocking them as teachers but my son tests exceptionally high on math. In the highest percentile but the range is pretty broad. It is basically 90% and up. It would be nice to know if he was 90% percent or if he was 99%. I am actually shocked a bit if he ever misses a question in math and if he makes below a 95 on a math test it is basically a freak and he had the flu or something. With that being said they don't understand his desire to build and create. All he really wants to do is build a robot and there is no push in teh classroom to create and build and make the math applicable for him. Fortunately we live in a college town and the college offers stem camps in the summer and we can afford to allow him to create and build robots with kits we get him.
I wonder how many men wouldn't consider going into early education with the hysteria about male pedophiles. Can you hug a kindergartner if you are a man, or will that cause someone to call Child Services?
An unrelated comment, I think the chart in this post is a bit odd. It seems to have picked just four "caring" professions and I'm not sure why I should take those as representative. What about doctors, physician and nurse's assistants, daycare workers and nannies, high school teachers, physical therapists, etc.?
Of course the men are absent from certain professions, indeed they are increasingly absent from the public square in general. The educated, professional women want their husbands at home helping with the household and childcare! Middle and working class women don’t bother with men because the middle and working class men are unemployed, deadbeats relegated to the dust heap of history by the feminists.
Blown Away is a show similar to Forged In Fire, but with glass - also full of artistic, masculine male role models
We loved it! Thought we thought some of the challenges were a little goofy.
Now if we could just have GOOD role models!