The wall of wishes: Girls and science

My daughter drew four pictures of professionals — veterinarian, inventor, doctor, and scientist — and taped the images in a row above her bed.

"Those are what I want to be when I grow up," she said.

If she's anything like I was at her age, those choices will change a hundred times before she ever sets foot on a college campus. But she isn't like me on one particular point: At no time in my childhood did I ever consider any science career. To me, those were "boy" careers and were mind-numbingly boring.

It's not like any teacher I ever had told me science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields were for boys. They told me I could be anything I wanted to be, but it seemed to me like boys were much more interested in those fields than any girl in my class. And nothing in the curriculum made me any more interested in pursuing such career paths.

But for as long as my daughter has been able to consider a career, she has wanted to be some sort of scientist and most often has gravitated toward animal-care careers, like veterinarians and zookeepers.

Perhaps the difference in what she wants and what I wanted are simple enough: She and I are two different people, but maybe there's at least a little more to it than that.

When I was a kid, TV programming for children was geared toward entertaining. My generation was limited to watching whatever aired on Saturday mornings: “Scooby-Doo,” “Bugs Bunny,” the “Super Friends,” etc., and a whole lot of too-serious-for-my-taste cartoons like "Johnny Quest," "Thundarr" and "Tarzan." Educational programming was limited to one thing: "Schoolhouse Rock."

My daughter's generation, however, has a lot more to choose from, and quite a large chunk of it educates. She has watched "Peg+Cat" and "Oomi Zoomi," both of which incorporate math lessons in the storyline. These days, you can find her watching "Octonauts" and "Wild Kratts," which teach about animals around the world, and Saturday morning programming on the major networks, all of which seem to focus on teaching children about animals.

Is it any wonder that she wants to work with animals when she grows up? Or that she enjoys science so much?

I'm glad that she doesn't consider STEM fields to be "boy" careers, as I did. I'm glad she feels the future is wide open.