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Comment by heinrichhartman | Hacker News Reader

My girl was 9months when sh started acrively pushing for bracelets, fancy hats, etc. I took her to a bike shop, an she immediately went for the pink Helmet with stars.

We dressed her in neutral cloths (second hand), we dont have a TV. Her mother does not wear juwlery or makeup. To us this appears innate.

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Pink used to be a boy's color.

I don't think your child is interested in jewellery and fancy hats for the same reason as a grown up. My children of both genders enjoy that stuff too, to the point where my none of my wife's jewellery is in one piece.

One thing I've noticed is that I can't look at them without a cultural confirmation bias. So I've completely lost faith that anyone can judge these things without a stringent experimental method.

>Pink used to be a boy's color. //

Which shows nothing. The natural allure might be for girls [in general] to go with pink, and the use of pink for boys (is/was it something to do with hunting?) might have been pure social conditioning.

Aside: Are their examples of paintings showing boys in pink? The only historical "pink" I know of is "hunting pinks" which are bright-red.

I imagine we're only talking "aristocratic boys", as red dyes were expensive and most boys through history will have had natural coloured clothing, I imagine.

My eldest boy used to adore his pink handbag, fwiw. That's a very limited data point, however.

Edit: found https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_sources_f... it does strike me these are selections to prove the point, ie poor statistics. Also there might be errors (blue for a boy, and pink for a boy - sounds most likely to be an error). Also that a lot of the pink for a boy quotes are for babies; seems like what mother's choose for babies is different to what children/juveniles/adults will choose for themselves.

Interesting though.

Nope. Historically, pink was considered a masculine color, because it's a shade of red. It was like this for centuries, until the 20th century in western nations.

>because it's a shade of red. //

Not quite sure what your nope refers to, but you release that's not a reason. All you've done is shift the question from "why is pink for boys" to "why is red for boys" and still haven't countered any of my observations, particularly that it might be "pink" was for boys because of social conditioning in the past.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. I'm just pointing out that this whole thing is entirely cultural, and that it's changed very, very recently (within the last century or so). There's no underlying biological reason for pink to appeal to little girls; it's just a cultural artifact. If little girls were dressed in lime green all the time from birth and the culture militantly pushed the idea that "lime green is only for girls!", then little girls would want lime green toys and clothes.

Pink was a color that was selected arbitrarily by some department store in order to sell more baby clothes. And the colors (blue/pink) were switched almost immediately by customers.

Unless your daughter never met with other kids or other adults, it's seems hard to say there's been no bias.

9 month old baby

So? At 9 months my son had met many other kids and they are very observant at that age, even if you don't notice.

Was your kid different? Your comment is not a lot to go off of but I get the sense you haven't raised a kid.

How about newborns?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222673203_Sex_Diffe...

I wonder if there's some social constraints that babies naturally seem to rebel against (or at least be less interested in). Cooks used to be mostly women, now they're mostly men. Accountants used to be mostly men, now they're mostly women. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/03/a-visual-history-of-g...

Pink was once for boys.

On the other hand it seems that infant chimps and rhesus monkeys play with gendered toys - https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/dec/20/chimps-play-...

It seems like nurture isn't naturally all that strong except in certain circumstances.

Follow the money. Where more money is to made at a given time, find the men.

Programming is a good example here. It used to be women's work, mainly because it was relegated to women (men didn't want to do it, and it was seen as not that important). Now it's reversed; there's lots of money in it.

This is frequently repeated but rarely with supporting data. Programming work during the 70s and 80s, during which women's representation in programming reached its peak, was well paid. According to the BLS entry level salaries were $20k for the lowest level of "computer programmer" and $40k for the highest. Entry level "systems analyst" is listed with $28k salary [1]. The current BLS statistics for computer programmers does not break down by seniority, but lists an average annual income of $90k [2]. Adjusted for inflation, and the salaries are pretty similar. In Silicon Valley, entry level salaries above $100k are common but this is not replicated nation wide.

1. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1985/10/rpt1full.pdf

2. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes150000.htm

My daughter (almost 2) doesn't like dolls, fancy hats, jewelry, etc (and neither does her mother); she prefers vehicles ("toot toot") and puzzles. We dressed her neutral (though including some blue and pink at times, also other colours), and sometimes girly (for parties like anniversaries etc).

Oh, and she loves the police/ambulance/fire dept, but most of all, the garbage truck!

Yeah, my sister, who was born into a family of three significantly older brothers and plenty of boy toys, didn't start to express feminine traits until a bit older. But puberty is, of course, when the biggest differences emerge.

And I love my Lisa Frank calendar despite being a man.

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