ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, ModeratorMod Emeritus
Basically whatever he likes is fine with me. When we take him to the toy store to see what he likes, we take him through every section and if he decides he wants something pink them that's what we get.
In the end I don't really mind what he likes or what people think he is, only when they give me a problem for catering to him as an individual rather than as a gender stereotype. I don't mind what he enjoys playing with or doing, I only want him to be secure enough in it that he won't be shamed out of it because someone thinks it wrong for him to like something even though he has a penis.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
Seems like it's generally easier for girls to have "Girl Power" these days and be interested in trucks or sports, but still hard for boys to be in touch with their Feminine side. Though I should mention I only have girls, so I don't know what it's like raising a boy these days.
It still bothered me that I had to explain to my daughter why girls only play Softball while boys play Baseball. Because Daddy is a coward and doesn't want to upset the social order by enrolling her in the baseball league?
I've never understood splitting up girls and boys for youth league baseball stuff, though I suppose it's just because in high school/college girls only have the option of softball really. When we were kids, my sister insisted that she be allowed to play on the same little league football team as me.
I made fun of her at first of course, because I was like 10, but being nearly 2 years older than me and quite a bit bigger at the time she just took it out on me by smashing me in tackling drills and humbling me quickly. =P
Basically whatever he likes is fine with me. When we take him to the toy store to see what he likes, we take him through every section and if he decides he wants something pink them that's what we get.
In the end I don't really mind what he likes or what people think he is, only when they give me a problem for catering to him as an individual rather than as a gender stereotype. I don't mind what he enjoys playing with or doing, I only want him to be secure enough in it that he won't be shamed out of it because someone thinks it wrong for him to like something even though he has a penis.
I say good for you. This is not to say anything about your son obviously, but today when we have so much more knowledge about the fact that there are little boys out there who already know they're different from other little boys, and are going to be gay, the last thing we need to do is make them feel bad about liking different things than what TV ads tell them they should. It's like stage 1 of making them feel bad about what they'll be later when they discover sexuality.
I had a family friend who was a couple years younger than me, and the only thing he wanted for his birthday(I think he must've been around 8 or 9 years old) was an easy bake oven. His mom bought him one, but of course back then they only came in pink, and his older brother and step dad spent a good part of his birthday party making fun of him over it.
This isn't to say that stuff had anything to do with it, but he ended up involved in some crime and last I heard was doing jail time for his part in a robbery. I like to think he might've been a really different person if from the start he'd been given support to be who he was instead of being given tough love or whatever the step dad thought he was doing.
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#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
yeah it's interesting that a girl toddler wearing jeans and a spiderman t shirt is so much more socially acceptable than a boy toddler wearing a party dress.
Yeah, I'd play social scientist and try to do something like that, but unfortunately she's the one who would have to face the consequences of my hubris. On the softball team she's got a lot of her friends from school, many of whom were on the softball team last year; it's where she wants to be. I still drop little reminders though that she could play baseball someday. If she wants to.
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
At the end of the day, it's okay that there are differences in men and women, and realistically, at the highest level or even at a college level men and women should not compete against each other in sports where men would have too much advantage.
Gender equality is of the utmost importance in the areas where it applies, but it doesn't apply to things like women playing baseball, basketball, or football against men. We ARE born differently, and a woman(without steroids) will never throw a baseball 90 miles per hour, will never be able to play defense against a 230 pound power forward or score on him, and will never be able to tackle a 240 pound running back barreling down the field.
There are plenty of athletics where gender doesn't matter, ie. Danica Patrick racing, but some sports are far more about our personal biology than others.
yeah it's interesting that a girl toddler wearing jeans and a spiderman t shirt is so much more socially acceptable than a boy toddler wearing a party dress.
That's because people don't assume a girl wearing a t shirt or jeans is a future lesbian in training, but a boy who wants to wear a dress is surely a damaged kid or being mistreated by his parents(according to people who would judge I mean).
There are basically no clothes or toys that a girl can play with that won't just be seen as her being a tomboy or whatever, but there's no generally accepted idea of a boy wanting to wear a tutu or playing with barbie dolls.
My son (9 now) was pretty gender neutral in terms of toys for quite awhile. I don't remember how old he was, but one year we had to get both a kitchen and a tool bench for him for Christmas. We didn't really have any rules specifying what he could/couldn't have except a pretty strict no military toy policy which included camo clothing (which I later had to back down on as it became super popular so we now allow a pair of pants occasionally).
Of course once public school kicked in he started going towards more traditional boy toys/activities. The one exception was sports - he hated attempts at team sports. We do a bowling league now and he loves it. I didn't feel like I fit in with the soccer parents anyways, so I was more than ok with that.
We're going to be pretty neutral, but the coloring our son will likely end up with favors greens and blues, so there's that. I do have one rule if they turn out gay though: You are not absolved of your duty to provide grandchildren. Them's the rules.
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, ModeratorMod Emeritus
Hahaha, I secretly feel the same way.
I mean, if he seriously didn't want kids I guess that's okay, but I'm not going to pretend I won't be very sad.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
I'm a new uncle thanks to my brother and his wife. They started inducing her early Sat. morning, my family and I drove up and arrived at the hospital Sat. afternoon. It was a pretty surreal experience that afternoon, with my sister, brother, his (drugged-up) wife, and me just hanging out, playing games, and having fun in the delivery room waiting until it was time to push. My sister and I later went to dinner with our parents, and when we got back to the hospital, it was just about time for the big event. I will always remember pacing the hallway in front of the family waiting room, and then hearing cries coming from their birthing room, a couple doors down. I was overjoyed that my niece had finally arrived!
Anyway, here's me with my niece, Sydney!
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XBox LIVE: Bogestrom | Destiny
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+26
El SkidThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited May 2014
Yeah, we only have the one daughter, and probably won't ever have another (it took us 10 years of infertility treatment to get the one, and my wife and I are coming up to or past 40 years old now).
On the one hand, I really want grandkids. On the other hand, I don't want to be one of those parents that basically harasses their kid about that constantly.
On the same level, I will be fiercely protective of her and want her to wait until she is in a good place before she has kids, but at the same time a part of me will be saying "teen pregnancy wouldn't be that bad considering how hard it was for us to conceive".
Oy. I'm going to need a therapist to figure all this out :rotate:
My wife and I were 29 before we decided we wanted to have a baby, and for all of our 20s both sides of our family "harassed" us about whether we'd do it. We just told them we weren't sure if we ever would, and they were respectful about it. But of course, now that we have our daughter we're both already always talking about how we're going to pester our daughter about giving us grandkids, so now I really understand where they were coming from.
I figure if I spend enough time creating wonderful family memories with my daughter, she'll be inclined to want to have kids and do the same with them, but of course it's ultimately up to her, and i'll be happy as long as she's happy.
I genuinely could not care less about my son having kids. Plus given the (probable) wreck the earth is likely to be in by the time he is old enough, I would not be surprised if he chose not to have kids anyways. At the moment I am much more concerned with my wife's biological clock which is ticking loud enough to be heard on the next block. She really wants another kid bad but we are not really in a position to afford it. And we probably will not try once we are past thirty since the rates of genetic disorders start to climb pretty sharply. Adult decisions suck.
I genuinely could not care less about my son having kids. Plus given the (probable) wreck the earth is likely to be in by the time he is old enough, I would not be surprised if he chose not to have kids anyways. At the moment I am much more concerned with my wife's biological clock which is ticking loud enough to be heard on the next block. She really wants another kid bad but we are not really in a position to afford it. And we probably will not try once we are past thirty since the rates of genetic disorders start to climb pretty sharply. Adult decisions suck.
Ha, what? We're having our first at 33. The sharp increase isn't until post-35, and it's still minute in comparison to total risk. At 25 (maternal age), you have a roughly .2% chance of genetic disorders. 34? .4%. Twice as risky, but still a really tiny proportion.
As for the grandkids - I'm just approximating based on how awesome my parents think their current grandkids are, plus you need some way to hassle your kids after they finish college and get a job.
+3
#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
yeah it's interesting that a girl toddler wearing jeans and a spiderman t shirt is so much more socially acceptable than a boy toddler wearing a party dress.
That's because people don't assume a girl wearing a t shirt or jeans is a future lesbian in training, but a boy who wants to wear a dress is surely a damaged kid or being mistreated by his parents(according to people who would judge I mean).
There are basically no clothes or toys that a girl can play with that won't just be seen as her being a tomboy or whatever, but there's no generally accepted idea of a boy wanting to wear a tutu or playing with barbie dolls.
I mean I know all that.
I'm just saying it's interesting.
And regarding your post about gender equality in sports, speaking as the coach of a roller derby team - a sport where the Womens competition is far and away higher profile and more popular than mens competition - women can take a hit, man. They can hit hard, they can run fast and throw far. Sure, you test the pure athleticism between genders, you put a world class male javellelin thrower against a female, the man will win. But main stream sports aren't tests of pure athleticism, they are tests of dozens of different skills and strengths used in varying combinations.
I have seen mens derby teams play women, and brute force and strength comes into it about 15%. The reason women consistently beat men in derby is because they have more practice, more focus, a better grasp of strategy.
If team sports was as socially expected in women as in men, if the sports weren't segregated by gender like baseball and softball, or like football and field hockey, you would see that regardless of gender, success in sport is way more to do with passion and practice and intelligence than brute strength.
And, like you said, maybe a woman will never throw a baseball 90 miles an hour (she might, though, if she had the opportunity to train as much as a man), but she might make an excellent catcher, or shortstop. Maybe she won't be able to play defense against a power forward, but I'll bet, given the chance, she'd make an excellent wide receiver.
Recreationally, sure. But even at the top college level there's a measurable difference between men and women. You can look at NCAA Division 1 Track and Field records, where the events are the same between genders, and men consistently perform better. Women have tried to play on the men's side in the PGA and yeah, that's golf, but they couldn't hang with the top players. I'll 100% endorse my girls playing sports with boys but if it gets to the point that they're serious about a college or even professional career I'm going to want them playing with girls, just to give them the best opportunity to succeed.
+1
#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
Recreationally, sure. But even at the top college level there's a measurable difference between men and women. You can look at NCAA Division 1 Track and Field records, where the events are the same between genders, and men consistently perform better. Women have tried to play on the men's side in the PGA and yeah, that's golf, but they couldn't hang with the top players. I'll 100% endorse my girls playing sports with boys but if it gets to the point that they're serious about a college or even professional career I'm going to want them playing with girls, just to give them the best opportunity to succeed.
again, track and field is not what I'm talking about.
Mostly I would really like to see a couple of things:
• Mixed gender team sports being a thing at the top level. (You cannot even go close to convincing me that in the 150 years of Major League Baseball not a single drafted or rostered player has been as bad as the best female baseball player in the world)
• Women's leagues being as well promoted, watched and paid as men's leagues.
so my fiance lurks the baby club forums to read all the whacky and horrible tales of pregnant people due in the same month as her. it's kind of scary because a lot of those babies are starting to pop now. but it's largely good value. anyway she finally made her first post yesterday to share this gem. at work, one of her colleagues made an astute observation:
"oh, the baby must have moved. you just look fat again today."
...
bsjezz on
+4
#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
Recreationally, sure. But even at the top college level there's a measurable difference between men and women. You can look at NCAA Division 1 Track and Field records, where the events are the same between genders, and men consistently perform better. Women have tried to play on the men's side in the PGA and yeah, that's golf, but they couldn't hang with the top players. I'll 100% endorse my girls playing sports with boys but if it gets to the point that they're serious about a college or even professional career I'm going to want them playing with girls, just to give them the best opportunity to succeed.
again, track and field is not what I'm talking about.
Mostly I would really like to see a couple of things:
• Mixed gender team sports being a thing at the top level. (You cannot even go close to convincing me that in the 150 years of Major League Baseball not a single drafted or rostered player has been as bad as the best female baseball player in the world)
• Women's leagues being as well promoted, watched and paid as men's leagues.
I'm totally with you on number 2, that is definitely a thing that should happen.
I think your first point is very dependent on situation. It could happen in baseball, sure, but you've conveniently picked the sport with the least amount of physical contact of the 4 majors (in the US anyway, which is the only sports scene I'm remotely qualified to talk about). Do you honestly think that introducing women to the NHL would work? That's a serious question, you're a hockey dude, do you think that's realistic?
i guess the point is that even if both 'women could never realistically play in the NHL, lol' and 'manon rheaume was the first woman to sign to an NHL contract and she played against the bruins and the blues' are true, one is encouraging and optimistic and respectful and should be the narrative about women in sports that we embrace
I'm not laughing about it and I'm not trying to be disrespectful. People say things like "well why couldn't a woman play in the NBA!" and I'm saying that there are valid, real reasons and I don't think it will happen. I'm sorry if that doesn't express your preferred narrative and I don't see it as being pessimistic because I don't think it should necessarily happen. I'd much rather see professional women's leagues get the attention, promotion, and money that they deserve.
Well, there's also the reality that most people won't be professional players and there's a good chance that as a woman she'll be able to play sports VERY competitively in her private life after college (various soccer leagues, ultimate frisbee, field hockey, flag football etc.).
I genuinely could not care less about my son having kids. Plus given the (probable) wreck the earth is likely to be in by the time he is old enough, I would not be surprised if he chose not to have kids anyways. At the moment I am much more concerned with my wife's biological clock which is ticking loud enough to be heard on the next block. She really wants another kid bad but we are not really in a position to afford it. And we probably will not try once we are past thirty since the rates of genetic disorders start to climb pretty sharply. Adult decisions suck.
Ha, what? We're having our first at 33. The sharp increase isn't until post-35, and it's still minute in comparison to total risk. At 25 (maternal age), you have a roughly .2% chance of genetic disorders. 34? .4%. Twice as risky, but still a really tiny proportion.
As for the grandkids - I'm just approximating based on how awesome my parents think their current grandkids are, plus you need some way to hassle your kids after they finish college and get a job.
Also as a parent of a child with Down Syndrome (my second), I gotta say that it's not all that bad thanks to modern medicine. Certainly there are other disorders, and Down Syndrome itself has those who are high functioning and those who are low, but in the end the child is indeed her own person and will grow and amaze you just as often as any typically developing kid. The world is a better place for every child that is born to a loving family, not just the typical kids.
Think of how a few months ago we all fell in love with Blackhawk1313's baby, and although he didn't survive, I strongly believe that we all were better off for knowing William and loving him (in an online/digital sort of way) than if he were never around.
So really, don't stress the baby thing, just love your wife and love any baby that's born and it will be a good thing.
DisruptedCapitalist on
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
+5
ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, ModeratorMod Emeritus
I have not seen Blackhawk in ages but I miss his updates, and while I can't begin to imagine what it was like for him and his wife to lose him, William's death really hit me in a way I can't explain.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
+4
ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, ModeratorMod Emeritus
Also, the curve for genetic disorders like downs don't start till 35, and babies are had by people over 40 all the time with no such problem, although I think complication rate is a bit higher for mother and baby after 40.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
yeah it's interesting that a girl toddler wearing jeans and a spiderman t shirt is so much more socially acceptable than a boy toddler wearing a party dress.
re this:
Sometimes men simply have to be role models.
Because his son likes to wear skirts Nils Pickert started with it as well. After all, the little one needs a role model. And he thinks long skirts with elastic bands suit him quite well anyways. A story about two misfits in the Province of southern Germany.
My five year old son likes to wear dresses. In Berlin Kreuzberg that alone would be enough to get into conversation with other parents. Is it wise or ridiculous? „Neither one nor the other!“ I still want to shout back at them. But sadly they can’t hear me any more. Because by now I live in a small town in South Germany. Not even a hundred thousand inhabitants, very traditional, very religious. Plainly motherland. Here the partiality of my son are not only a subject for parents, they are a town wide issue. And I did my bit for that to happen.
Yes, I’m one of those dads, that try to raise their children equal. I’m not one of those academic daddies that ramble about gender equality during their studies and then, as soon as a child’s in the house, still relapse into those fluffy gender roles: He’s finding fulfilment in his carrier and she’s doing the rest.
Thus I am, I know that by now, part of the minority that makes a fool of themselves from time to time. Out of conviction.
In my case that’s because I didn’t want to talk my son into not wearing dresses and skirts. He didn’t make friends in doing that in Berlin already and after a lot of contemplation I had only one option left: To broaden my shoulders for my little buddy and dress in a skirt myself. After all you can’t expect a child at pre-school age to have the same ability to assert themselves as an adult. Completely without role model. And so I became that role model.
We already had skirt and dress days back then during mild Kreuzbergian weather. And I think long skirts with elastic bands suit me quite well anyways. Dresses are a bit more difficult. There was either no reaction of the people in Berlin or it was positive. They’re used to spacy people. In my small town in the south of Germany that’s a little bit different.
Being all stressed out, because of the moving I forgot to notify the nursery-school teachers to have an eye on my boy not being laughed at because of his fondness of dresses and skirts. Shortly after moving he didn’t dare to go to nursery-school wearing a skirt or a dress any more. And looking at me with big eyes he asked: “Daddy, when are you going to wear a skirt again?”
To this very day I’m thankful for that women, that stared at us on the street until she ran face first into a street light. My son was roaring with laugher. And the next day he fished out a dress from the depth of his wardrobe. At first only for the weekend. Later also for nursery-school.
And what’s the little guy doing by now? He’s painting his fingernails. He thinks it looks pretty on my nails, too. He’s simply smiling, when other boys ( and it’s nearly always boys) want to make fun of him and says: “You only don’t dare to wear skirts and dresses because your dads don’t dare to either.” That’s how broad his own shoulders have become by now. And all thanks to daddy in a skirt.
KakodaimonosCode fondlerHelping the 1% get richerRegistered Userregular
So far things are going good with the new guy. One thing we have to watch is he will sleep too much and skip his feedings if we let him and then he gets lethargic and wants to sleep even more.
Also, the curve for genetic disorders like downs don't start till 35, and babies are had by people over 40 all the time with no such problem, although I think complication rate is a bit higher for mother and baby after 40.
Yes, my wife was 45 when we had Lily so we were in the high-risk category. My wife often gets upset thinking that somehow we should have been more careful or something because of Lily's condition, but really, Lily is wonderful and any baby born without Down Syndrome just wouldn't have been Lily.
yeah it's interesting that a girl toddler wearing jeans and a spiderman t shirt is so much more socially acceptable than a boy toddler wearing a party dress.
That's because people don't assume a girl wearing a t shirt or jeans is a future lesbian in training, but a boy who wants to wear a dress is surely a damaged kid or being mistreated by his parents(according to people who would judge I mean).
There are basically no clothes or toys that a girl can play with that won't just be seen as her being a tomboy or whatever, but there's no generally accepted idea of a boy wanting to wear a tutu or playing with barbie dolls.
I mean I know all that.
I'm just saying it's interesting.
And regarding your post about gender equality in sports, speaking as the coach of a roller derby team - a sport where the Womens competition is far and away higher profile and more popular than mens competition - women can take a hit, man. They can hit hard, they can run fast and throw far. Sure, you test the pure athleticism between genders, you put a world class male javellelin thrower against a female, the man will win. But main stream sports aren't tests of pure athleticism, they are tests of dozens of different skills and strengths used in varying combinations.
I have seen mens derby teams play women, and brute force and strength comes into it about 15%. The reason women consistently beat men in derby is because they have more practice, more focus, a better grasp of strategy.
If team sports was as socially expected in women as in men, if the sports weren't segregated by gender like baseball and softball, or like football and field hockey, you would see that regardless of gender, success in sport is way more to do with passion and practice and intelligence than brute strength.
And, like you said, maybe a woman will never throw a baseball 90 miles an hour (she might, though, if she had the opportunity to train as much as a man), but she might make an excellent catcher, or shortstop. Maybe she won't be able to play defense against a power forward, but I'll bet, given the chance, she'd make an excellent wide receiver.
I know nothing about roller derby, so for all I know the skills involved translate between gender so easily it wouldn't matter if it was co-ed, much like stock car racing or whatever.
But for the sports I mentioned, it's true that women can't compete with men just based on physiology. First of all, no, a woman will never throw a baseball 90 miles per hour, regardless of training, without performance enhancing drugs, and maybe not even then. Our bodies are just different. And playing catcher or shortstop require you to throw the ball with high velocity to get runners out too, even if playing defense at those positions would be no problem for a woman. Not to mention there's the consideration of whether or not she would have the strength required to have the bat speed to even go up to bat against a major league pitcher.
And how big is this theoretical woman playing wide receiver? Because there are a few things a wide receiver must be able to do:
1) Run routes and catch the ball.
2) Block for her teammates on running plays or when another guy catches the ball.
A woman can run routes and catch the ball no doubt. It's doubtful a woman could develop the necessary explosive strength in her legs to come off the line the way she'd need to in order to play at a low weight(she'd have to be a pure speed receiver), but there are ~165 pound guys playing wideout in the NFL now like DeSean Jackson, even if he's known as a guy who is going to get broken in half if he tries to go across the middle.
But imagine a ~150(or less) pound woman trying to block a 250 pound linebacker or even a 220 pound cornerback. She'd be thrown to the ground like a rag doll in an instant, if not outright injured.
We're just made differently. There's nothing wrong with that. Your point about success in sports being more to do with passion, practice, or intelligence is true in some ways, and extremely false in some ways. If what you say is true, then there'd be plenty of passionate 5'8" white men who are NFL fans would be playing in the NFL instead of sitting at home watching. Spud Webb overcame being 5'7" to be an NBA star, but it had a lot less to do with passion and a lot more to do with the fact that even at that height he had crazy athleticism, and could dunk the ball.
At the end of the day, it's okay that there are differences in men and women
I don't mean to put you on blast, here I promise.
It is ok that there are differences between people. It is ok that there are differences between large groups of people, even.
It is not ok for a bunch of people to dictate those differences.
The more you read about it in different time periods and locations, the more you realize that gender roles are just 100% made up.
I agree and disagree with some of what you're saying here. Gender roles are not equal to gender capabilities. A genetically gifted woman will never be able to naturally do some things physically that a genetically gifted man can do. It's not a gender role, it's biology. No matter how hard a man wants to he will not conceive a child, and no matter how hard a woman tries she will never be able to compete with men who have testosterone that allowed them to outweigh her by 60 pounds and have much more explosive strength.
Recreationally, sure. But even at the top college level there's a measurable difference between men and women. You can look at NCAA Division 1 Track and Field records, where the events are the same between genders, and men consistently perform better. Women have tried to play on the men's side in the PGA and yeah, that's golf, but they couldn't hang with the top players. I'll 100% endorse my girls playing sports with boys but if it gets to the point that they're serious about a college or even professional career I'm going to want them playing with girls, just to give them the best opportunity to succeed.
again, track and field is not what I'm talking about.
Mostly I would really like to see a couple of things:
• Mixed gender team sports being a thing at the top level. (You cannot even go close to convincing me that in the 150 years of Major League Baseball not a single drafted or rostered player has been as bad as the best female baseball player in the world)
• Women's leagues being as well promoted, watched and paid as men's leagues.
Track and field is a good indicator though, because there's a lot of explosive strength and speed measured in those contests, which are some of the most important things in team sports like football and basketball as well.
You can choose to believe there have been women that could've competed in the MLB, but I choose to believe if some genetic anomaly was out there, a GM would've put her on a minor league team and she'd have played in the MLB if she was good enough. You keep going back to baseball which I will agree is out of the big 3 american sports is the most likely one to have a woman who could compete, but there's still a lot of strength required to play at that level. People wildly underestimate how hard it is to hit a 90+ mile per hour fastball, and a big part of that is swing speed because you have almost no time between when you realize you need to swing and when you have to get that bat around.
As for women's leagues being promoted, watched, and paid as well as men's leagues, that is PURELY a money issue. It's not like the WNBA doesn't exist. You can't make people want to watch it as much as they want to watch the NBA. Maybe they could run more ads, sure, but if running them doesn't equate to more viewers then it's stupid to run more. The viewership just comes down to the interest, and frankly, the people you'd expect to want to watch the WNBA more than the NBA are women, who on average are not as interested in sports as men are.
As for being paid, that's completely up to how popular the sport is. This isn't a man/woman thing. I'm sure Arena football players would like to be paid like NFL football players too, but unless their sport makes NFL money it's just not going to happen.
All this being said, I appreciate the discussion and your replies, but I'm going to bow out of this particular line of discussion because I don't want to take away from what this thread is really about and people showing pictures and sharing stories of their wonderful kids.
Joshmvii on
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, ModeratorMod Emeritus
Also, the curve for genetic disorders like downs don't start till 35, and babies are had by people over 40 all the time with no such problem, although I think complication rate is a bit higher for mother and baby after 40.
Yes, my wife was 45 when we had Lily so we were in the high-risk category. My wife often gets upset thinking that somehow we should have been more careful or something because of Lily's condition, but really, Lily is wonderful and any baby born without Down Syndrome just wouldn't have been Lily.
Eh, she is amazing and adorable and if you love her and she's not in constant crippling pain, it doesn't feel like it should even be a thing. I know that's easier said than done when you're blaming yourself for something though.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
To give you an idea on differences in men and women in team sports. The US Women's National Soccer team (win medals, win world cups, make money or something like that) played the US Boys U-17 team in 2012 and lost 8-2. The US Women's National Soccer team frequently loses club matches to US Boys U-15 teams.
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#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
To give you an idea on differences in men and women in team sports. The US Women's National Soccer team (win medals, win world cups, make money or something like that) played the US Boys U-17 team in 2012 and lost 8-2. The US Women's National Soccer team frequently loses club matches to US Boys U-15 teams.
The Australian national soccer team played the American Samoan national soccer team in 2001 and won 31-0
Samoans - famously strong and burly men, but with significantly less money, time and focus paid to soccer than the Australians
To give you an idea on differences in men and women in team sports. The US Women's National Soccer team (win medals, win world cups, make money or something like that) played the US Boys U-17 team in 2012 and lost 8-2. The US Women's National Soccer team frequently loses club matches to US Boys U-15 teams.
The Australian national soccer team played the American Samoan national soccer team in 2001 and won 31-0
Samoans - famously strong and burly men, but with significantly less money, time and focus paid to soccer than the Australians
much like womens sport in general
Yea, it's really hard to make any comparisons when one side has the benefit of an entire infrastructure dedicated to cultivating talent at the sport and the other does not.
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In the end I don't really mind what he likes or what people think he is, only when they give me a problem for catering to him as an individual rather than as a gender stereotype. I don't mind what he enjoys playing with or doing, I only want him to be secure enough in it that he won't be shamed out of it because someone thinks it wrong for him to like something even though he has a penis.
I've never understood splitting up girls and boys for youth league baseball stuff, though I suppose it's just because in high school/college girls only have the option of softball really. When we were kids, my sister insisted that she be allowed to play on the same little league football team as me.
I made fun of her at first of course, because I was like 10, but being nearly 2 years older than me and quite a bit bigger at the time she just took it out on me by smashing me in tackling drills and humbling me quickly. =P
I say good for you. This is not to say anything about your son obviously, but today when we have so much more knowledge about the fact that there are little boys out there who already know they're different from other little boys, and are going to be gay, the last thing we need to do is make them feel bad about liking different things than what TV ads tell them they should. It's like stage 1 of making them feel bad about what they'll be later when they discover sexuality.
I had a family friend who was a couple years younger than me, and the only thing he wanted for his birthday(I think he must've been around 8 or 9 years old) was an easy bake oven. His mom bought him one, but of course back then they only came in pink, and his older brother and step dad spent a good part of his birthday party making fun of him over it.
This isn't to say that stuff had anything to do with it, but he ended up involved in some crime and last I heard was doing jail time for his part in a robbery. I like to think he might've been a really different person if from the start he'd been given support to be who he was instead of being given tough love or whatever the step dad thought he was doing.
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Gender equality is of the utmost importance in the areas where it applies, but it doesn't apply to things like women playing baseball, basketball, or football against men. We ARE born differently, and a woman(without steroids) will never throw a baseball 90 miles per hour, will never be able to play defense against a 230 pound power forward or score on him, and will never be able to tackle a 240 pound running back barreling down the field.
There are plenty of athletics where gender doesn't matter, ie. Danica Patrick racing, but some sports are far more about our personal biology than others.
That's because people don't assume a girl wearing a t shirt or jeans is a future lesbian in training, but a boy who wants to wear a dress is surely a damaged kid or being mistreated by his parents(according to people who would judge I mean).
There are basically no clothes or toys that a girl can play with that won't just be seen as her being a tomboy or whatever, but there's no generally accepted idea of a boy wanting to wear a tutu or playing with barbie dolls.
Of course once public school kicked in he started going towards more traditional boy toys/activities. The one exception was sports - he hated attempts at team sports. We do a bowling league now and he loves it. I didn't feel like I fit in with the soccer parents anyways, so I was more than ok with that.
I mean, if he seriously didn't want kids I guess that's okay, but I'm not going to pretend I won't be very sad.
I'm a new uncle thanks to my brother and his wife. They started inducing her early Sat. morning, my family and I drove up and arrived at the hospital Sat. afternoon. It was a pretty surreal experience that afternoon, with my sister, brother, his (drugged-up) wife, and me just hanging out, playing games, and having fun in the delivery room waiting until it was time to push. My sister and I later went to dinner with our parents, and when we got back to the hospital, it was just about time for the big event. I will always remember pacing the hallway in front of the family waiting room, and then hearing cries coming from their birthing room, a couple doors down. I was overjoyed that my niece had finally arrived!
Anyway, here's me with my niece, Sydney!
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On the one hand, I really want grandkids. On the other hand, I don't want to be one of those parents that basically harasses their kid about that constantly.
On the same level, I will be fiercely protective of her and want her to wait until she is in a good place before she has kids, but at the same time a part of me will be saying "teen pregnancy wouldn't be that bad considering how hard it was for us to conceive".
Oy. I'm going to need a therapist to figure all this out :rotate:
I figure if I spend enough time creating wonderful family memories with my daughter, she'll be inclined to want to have kids and do the same with them, but of course it's ultimately up to her, and i'll be happy as long as she's happy.
PSN:Furlion
Ha, what? We're having our first at 33. The sharp increase isn't until post-35, and it's still minute in comparison to total risk. At 25 (maternal age), you have a roughly .2% chance of genetic disorders. 34? .4%. Twice as risky, but still a really tiny proportion.
As for the grandkids - I'm just approximating based on how awesome my parents think their current grandkids are, plus you need some way to hassle your kids after they finish college and get a job.
I mean I know all that.
I'm just saying it's interesting.
And regarding your post about gender equality in sports, speaking as the coach of a roller derby team - a sport where the Womens competition is far and away higher profile and more popular than mens competition - women can take a hit, man. They can hit hard, they can run fast and throw far. Sure, you test the pure athleticism between genders, you put a world class male javellelin thrower against a female, the man will win. But main stream sports aren't tests of pure athleticism, they are tests of dozens of different skills and strengths used in varying combinations.
I have seen mens derby teams play women, and brute force and strength comes into it about 15%. The reason women consistently beat men in derby is because they have more practice, more focus, a better grasp of strategy.
If team sports was as socially expected in women as in men, if the sports weren't segregated by gender like baseball and softball, or like football and field hockey, you would see that regardless of gender, success in sport is way more to do with passion and practice and intelligence than brute strength.
And, like you said, maybe a woman will never throw a baseball 90 miles an hour (she might, though, if she had the opportunity to train as much as a man), but she might make an excellent catcher, or shortstop. Maybe she won't be able to play defense against a power forward, but I'll bet, given the chance, she'd make an excellent wide receiver.
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I don't mean to put you on blast, here I promise.
It is ok that there are differences between people. It is ok that there are differences between large groups of people, even.
It is not ok for a bunch of people to dictate those differences.
The more you read about it in different time periods and locations, the more you realize that gender roles are just 100% made up.
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again, track and field is not what I'm talking about.
Mostly I would really like to see a couple of things:
• Mixed gender team sports being a thing at the top level. (You cannot even go close to convincing me that in the 150 years of Major League Baseball not a single drafted or rostered player has been as bad as the best female baseball player in the world)
• Women's leagues being as well promoted, watched and paid as men's leagues.
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"oh, the baby must have moved. you just look fat again today."
...
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I'm totally with you on number 2, that is definitely a thing that should happen.
I think your first point is very dependent on situation. It could happen in baseball, sure, but you've conveniently picked the sport with the least amount of physical contact of the 4 majors (in the US anyway, which is the only sports scene I'm remotely qualified to talk about). Do you honestly think that introducing women to the NHL would work? That's a serious question, you're a hockey dude, do you think that's realistic?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manon_Rhéaume
So she played in a few preseason exhibition games? She didn't make the team so you're not exactly disproving my point.
Also as a parent of a child with Down Syndrome (my second), I gotta say that it's not all that bad thanks to modern medicine. Certainly there are other disorders, and Down Syndrome itself has those who are high functioning and those who are low, but in the end the child is indeed her own person and will grow and amaze you just as often as any typically developing kid. The world is a better place for every child that is born to a loving family, not just the typical kids.
Think of how a few months ago we all fell in love with Blackhawk1313's baby, and although he didn't survive, I strongly believe that we all were better off for knowing William and loving him (in an online/digital sort of way) than if he were never around.
So really, don't stress the baby thing, just love your wife and love any baby that's born and it will be a good thing.
re this:
(will crosspost in dag thread.)
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
Yes, my wife was 45 when we had Lily so we were in the high-risk category. My wife often gets upset thinking that somehow we should have been more careful or something because of Lily's condition, but really, Lily is wonderful and any baby born without Down Syndrome just wouldn't have been Lily.
I know nothing about roller derby, so for all I know the skills involved translate between gender so easily it wouldn't matter if it was co-ed, much like stock car racing or whatever.
But for the sports I mentioned, it's true that women can't compete with men just based on physiology. First of all, no, a woman will never throw a baseball 90 miles per hour, regardless of training, without performance enhancing drugs, and maybe not even then. Our bodies are just different. And playing catcher or shortstop require you to throw the ball with high velocity to get runners out too, even if playing defense at those positions would be no problem for a woman. Not to mention there's the consideration of whether or not she would have the strength required to have the bat speed to even go up to bat against a major league pitcher.
And how big is this theoretical woman playing wide receiver? Because there are a few things a wide receiver must be able to do:
1) Run routes and catch the ball.
2) Block for her teammates on running plays or when another guy catches the ball.
A woman can run routes and catch the ball no doubt. It's doubtful a woman could develop the necessary explosive strength in her legs to come off the line the way she'd need to in order to play at a low weight(she'd have to be a pure speed receiver), but there are ~165 pound guys playing wideout in the NFL now like DeSean Jackson, even if he's known as a guy who is going to get broken in half if he tries to go across the middle.
But imagine a ~150(or less) pound woman trying to block a 250 pound linebacker or even a 220 pound cornerback. She'd be thrown to the ground like a rag doll in an instant, if not outright injured.
We're just made differently. There's nothing wrong with that. Your point about success in sports being more to do with passion, practice, or intelligence is true in some ways, and extremely false in some ways. If what you say is true, then there'd be plenty of passionate 5'8" white men who are NFL fans would be playing in the NFL instead of sitting at home watching. Spud Webb overcame being 5'7" to be an NBA star, but it had a lot less to do with passion and a lot more to do with the fact that even at that height he had crazy athleticism, and could dunk the ball.
I agree and disagree with some of what you're saying here. Gender roles are not equal to gender capabilities. A genetically gifted woman will never be able to naturally do some things physically that a genetically gifted man can do. It's not a gender role, it's biology. No matter how hard a man wants to he will not conceive a child, and no matter how hard a woman tries she will never be able to compete with men who have testosterone that allowed them to outweigh her by 60 pounds and have much more explosive strength.
Track and field is a good indicator though, because there's a lot of explosive strength and speed measured in those contests, which are some of the most important things in team sports like football and basketball as well.
You can choose to believe there have been women that could've competed in the MLB, but I choose to believe if some genetic anomaly was out there, a GM would've put her on a minor league team and she'd have played in the MLB if she was good enough. You keep going back to baseball which I will agree is out of the big 3 american sports is the most likely one to have a woman who could compete, but there's still a lot of strength required to play at that level. People wildly underestimate how hard it is to hit a 90+ mile per hour fastball, and a big part of that is swing speed because you have almost no time between when you realize you need to swing and when you have to get that bat around.
As for women's leagues being promoted, watched, and paid as well as men's leagues, that is PURELY a money issue. It's not like the WNBA doesn't exist. You can't make people want to watch it as much as they want to watch the NBA. Maybe they could run more ads, sure, but if running them doesn't equate to more viewers then it's stupid to run more. The viewership just comes down to the interest, and frankly, the people you'd expect to want to watch the WNBA more than the NBA are women, who on average are not as interested in sports as men are.
As for being paid, that's completely up to how popular the sport is. This isn't a man/woman thing. I'm sure Arena football players would like to be paid like NFL football players too, but unless their sport makes NFL money it's just not going to happen.
All this being said, I appreciate the discussion and your replies, but I'm going to bow out of this particular line of discussion because I don't want to take away from what this thread is really about and people showing pictures and sharing stories of their wonderful kids.
Eh, she is amazing and adorable and if you love her and she's not in constant crippling pain, it doesn't feel like it should even be a thing. I know that's easier said than done when you're blaming yourself for something though.
The Australian national soccer team played the American Samoan national soccer team in 2001 and won 31-0
Samoans - famously strong and burly men, but with significantly less money, time and focus paid to soccer than the Australians
much like womens sport in general
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
Yea, it's really hard to make any comparisons when one side has the benefit of an entire infrastructure dedicated to cultivating talent at the sport and the other does not.