The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: May 6, 2007

Official News - page 8


REAL LIFE NEWS: BE CAREFUL HOW YOU NAME YOUR KIDS

by Hazed

Remember little baby Metallica, whose Swedish parents were battling in the courts to be allowed to call their child after the heavy metal band? I covered this story in the Star a few weeks ago - see http://www.ibgames.net/fednews/070422/official09.html.

Now a new survey has come out with surprising - shocking, even - information that suggests that parents should be a lot more careful about what they call their children, particularly girls. The research shows that girls who are given very feminine names are much less likely to study maths or physics after the age of 16.

The subjects are far more popular amongst girls with names such as Abigail, Lauren or Ashley, which have been judged to be less feminine than names like Anna, Emma or Elizabeth. It appears that even twin girls can be sent off on completely differently career paths, just because the parents give them names like Isabella (very feminine) and Alex (the other end of the scale). A study of 1,000 pairs of sisters in the US found that Alex was twice as likely as her twin to take maths or science at a higher level.

The author of the report says that the likely cause of this remarkable finding is to do with the different ways people treat each other depending on their names - they make decisions about what a person is like purely because of the name. "There are plenty of exceptions but, on average, people treat Isabellas differently to Alexes," said David Figlio, professor of economics at the University of Florida. "Girls with feminine names were often typecast." It's not that they are less clever or capable, it's that they feel pressured to avoid the tougher subjects.

You can read about this fascinating study here - and if you expect to have children in future, you should take this into account when naming them!


Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page