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Mothers talk about math more with sons than daughters

Parents, you may be unconsciously reinforcing stereotypes about girls' aptitude for math.

A new study suggests that parents unintentionally talk about numbers and math concepts less with their daughters than with their sons — even when their kids are under the age of two. That early-childhood experience could contribute to a lack of confidence or aversion to math later in life, the authors suggest.

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Researchers at the University of Delaware examined a series of recordings of interactions between mothers and their children either at home or in free-play settings in a laboratory. The children ranged in age from 20 to 27 months.

The results showed parents draw boys' attention to numerical concepts far more often than girls', Alicia Chang, the study's lead author, told Miller McCune magazine. Chang says that parents speak to boys about number concepts twice as often as they do girls.

"For cardinal-numbers speech, in which a number is attached to an obvious noun reference — 'Here are five raisins' or 'Look at those two beds' — the difference was even larger," she says.

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Chang and her fellow authors write that more exposure to number-related talk early in life "may promote familiarity and liking for mathematical concepts," which could influence girls' enjoyment of math later on, and even their career choices.

"The specific words you use with your young children — especially in that crucial period between 18 and 22 months, when you're in a vocabulary-learning boom — those are the words that they learn and understand and are most familiar with," explains Chang.

Yet despite math-related gender stereotypes, recent data from the Council of Ministers of Education in Canada indicates that girls perform just as well as boys in grade eight math. However, they found that boys did better than girls in numbers and operations, like adding and subtracting. For geometry and measurement, patterns and relationships, and data management and probability, girls and boys showed similar levels of comprehension.

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Fiona Dunbar, a lecturer in the math department at the University of Waterloo, is resolute that her one and a half-year old daughter will grow up hearing about math all the time.

"She won't have a choice," Dunbar says, laughing. "I'm going to make sure of it."

Dunbar also works with foster girls in high school who have an interest in mathematics. She runs a workshop called Think About Math!, designed to get high school girls excited about math by showing them the kinds of careers you could have in mathematics.

Another member of the Waterloo math department, Barbara Csima, says more women are enrolling in math programs at the university, but there's still a lot more to be done.

"Overall the numbers look pretty good…but you can still go into a fourth year math class with 20 students and only three of them are female," says Csima, who is also the chair of the university's Women in Mathematics Committee.