Ambiguous clue (Dell)

In article , Brian says...

The club's members are seven women (why all women?)

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/...ds/003118.html

2003 U.S. Census figures estimate 5.4 million stay at home moms and 98,000
stay at home dads.

A random selection of 7 stay at home parents would have at least 1 man
almost 12% of the time.
I agree, why all women?

A club where Carl ran around with Greta and Dacia might raise a few eyebrows
in some neighborhoods unless Carl's partner was Henry.



Dontcha love these suddenly-crossposted threads dragging some little beef with
someone into another group.

What the heck group are you talking about??

Banty

"S." ) writes:
Use this link:

http://www.dellmagazines.com/custome...lcontact.shtml

Thanks, everyone, for your replies, and I apologize for
taking up your time, because after I posted I realized I could
ask someone to read the solution in the back of the magazine and
tell me what the clue meant without telling me the solution.
So I did that and apparently the three women mentioned in the
clue are the parents of the kids being watched on those dates.
I may also contact the magazine.

In article , Banty says...

In article , Brian says...

The club's members are seven women (why all women?)

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/...ds/003118.html

2003 U.S. Census figures estimate 5.4 million stay at home moms and 98,000
stay at home dads.

A random selection of 7 stay at home parents would have at least 1 man
almost 12% of the time.
I agree, why all women?

A club where Carl ran around with Greta and Dacia might raise a few eyebrows
in some neighborhoods unless Carl's partner was Henry.



Dontcha love these suddenly-crossposted threads dragging some little beef with
someone into another group.

What the heck group are you talking about??

Banty



Oh, OK, now I geddit - I didn't pay much attention tot he actual original post
in this thread.

So - my answer is - it's all women because that's what people expect and how men
and women are protrayed, it's not right, and you should write the puzzle-writers
protesting.

After all, that's how women, being quite used to having seen roles we fulfill
being protrayed as being all men thankyouverymuch, made some headway as to how
many roles women are protrayed in.

So get writing.

Cheers,
Banty

"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article , Banty says...

In article , Brian says...

The club's members are seven women (why all women?)

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/...ds/003118.html

2003 U.S. Census figures estimate 5.4 million stay at home moms and
98,000
stay at home dads.

A random selection of 7 stay at home parents would have at least 1 man
almost 12% of the time.
I agree, why all women?

A club where Carl ran around with Greta and Dacia might raise a few
eyebrows
in some neighborhoods unless Carl's partner was Henry.



Dontcha love these suddenly-crossposted threads dragging some little beef
with
someone into another group.

What the heck group are you talking about??

Banty



Oh, OK, now I geddit - I didn't pay much attention tot he actual original
post
in this thread.

So - my answer is - it's all women because that's what people expect and
how men
and women are protrayed, it's not right, and you should write the
puzzle-writers
protesting.

After all, that's how women, being quite used to having seen roles we
fulfill
being protrayed as being all men thankyouverymuch, made some headway as to
how
many roles women are protrayed in.

So get writing.

I don't see what society sees as women's roles as being a lesser role. That
is always the implication in these arguments. In fact, I'm quite happy it
is there, because I have a choice to work or not. DH, OTOH, probably feels
that he needs to work regardless. Luckily, I think he'd rather work than be
home with the kids all day. I am happy with that, because I get to stay
home and watch the kids grow up. OTOH, if it were he that were SAHD, then
I'd have to work; which I'd rather not, because I'd miss the kids too much.

Financially, it is better that DH works, because he earns more than I. We'd
have a lower standard of living on my salary, though it is possible for me
to support the family, if I worked full-time. You might argue that he makes
more because he is a man, but that is not true. If he were in my
profession, we'd make exactly the same on an hourly basis. If I had his
job, we'd make the same on an hourly basis. I'd say his profession is
graduating men and women at equal rates at this point.

In many of the families around here, the women are happy to stay at home for
the same reasons as mine. They had full careers before motherhood, but they
want to be home with their kids.

I do think there are some genetic tendency tied to this need to be with the
kids. I don't think DH feels as strongly about staying with the kids as I
do. He always wants me to put the kids in full-time daycare so I can have
free time. Before I get flamed, I do not think this means men must only do
manly jobs and women must do women's work, but there is a tendency for men
to like to do certain work more and women to like to do certain work more
and why not split the work the way that makes both people happy? DH does
the laundry because he likes doing the laundry. I do the dishes because I'd
rather not do laundry. If a man wanted to stay home with the kids, more
power to him. If his wife wants to work, they will be a happy couple; if
not, they will have to compromise.

Use this link:

http://www.dellmagazines.com/custome...lcontact.shtml


"Catherine Woodgold" wrote in message
...
(Cross-posted to rec.puzzles and misc.kids.)

I have the November 2006 issue of Dell's Math Puzzles and Logic
Problems. I've been attempting to solve Logic Problem 18,
"Baby-Sitting Catastrophe" by Robert Nelson. This puzzle is about
a fictional babysitting club (similar to ones in real life).
The club's members are seven women (why all women?) who
take turns babysitting each other's children. A member earns
points by babysitting, and spends points by having someone
babysit her children.

I would appreciate opinions about the meaning of
Clue 7: "Three consecutive baby-sitting jobs
were for Greta, Dacia and Carol."

Are the women mentioned in this clue the ones doing the
babysitting, or the ones whose children are being watched
by another member?

In other words, is the word "for" being used in the sense
of "I was babysitting for Greta last Tuesday," or in the
sense of "I have a job for you"?

Thanks in advance for your input.

On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 15:31:51 -0400, "CapCity"
wrote:

I would guess (and it's just a guess) that it were the children of Greta,
Dacia and Carol who were watched. If it were those three who did the sitting
then I would guess "by" would have been used instead of "for".

Actually, the way it is worded, I would say that Greta, Dacia and
Carol were the children, not the moms. But since we haven't got
the other clues, I may be wrong about that.





--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

"Brian" ) writes:
The club's members are seven women (why all women?)

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/...ds/003118.html

2003 U.S. Census figures estimate 5.4 million stay at home moms and 98,000
stay at home dads.

A random selection of 7 stay at home parents would have at least 1 man
almost 12% of the time.
I agree, why all women?

I looked around a bit on the U.S. census website and didn't
find that information. I wonder how it was defined.
I suppose they asked people a question like "which of
the following best describes your employment status?"
and gave them a number of choices such as employed,
unemployed, parent at home, retired. I suppose a lot of
women who were working a few hours a week, or doing volunteer
work, or taking long-term leave from their jobs to look
after their children, or looking for work, or retired young to
spend time with their children proudly marked down "parent at home,"
while a smaller but still sizeable number of men in
similar situations did not choose to mark "parent at
home" but marked instead "employed", "unemployed" or
"retired", helping to perpetuate stereotypical roles.

Anyway, there's no reason why members of a babysitting club
have to be parents at home. Often such clubs are
focused on evening babysitting, outside normal working
hours. Even if they're during working hours: surely
working parents have more of a need of childcare during
working hours than nonworking ones. I didn't have much
need of babysitters when I was a mother at home, but
a barter babysitting arrangement I was in was not while
I was at home but while I was working, and involved
looking after children for part of the day while parents
were working.

Women may tend to be more interested than men, on
average, in joining babysitting
clubs for reasons of instinct as well as sterotype,
but the depiction of an all-women babysitting club in the magazine
bothers me more than the depiction of all-women sewing
club, because it seems to support the idea that mothers
have to either look after their own children or find someone
to do it for them, while fathers don't have
to worry about it. Another thing that bothers me is
when some famous hockey player or something is described
proudly as someone who "helps" his wife look after
their baby; why isn't the wife described as "helping"
the hockey player look after his baby?

Yet another one was a "Dear Abby" column a while back
where someone was complaining about a mother who didn't
look after her baby enough but kept asking her neighbour
(the letter-writer) to look after the baby so she could
rest, and that the mother left the
baby's diaper unchanged too long. The father was mentioned as
being present in conversations,
but nothing was said about whether he ever looked after the baby.
Abby replied that the mother was being neglectful
and I think she said the mother should take a parenting
course or something to learn how to be a proper parent.
I think she was wrong to target the mother as being
supposedly neglectful; if not enough baby care was
being done, perhaps that was the father's responsbility
at least as much as the mother's. It sounded to me
that possibly the mother was exhausted and doing as
much as she could and that possibly the father was
doing little or nothing. Whether or not that was the
case, I think Abby was wrong to place all the blame
on the mother just based on that letter. I doubt
she would have blamed only the father if the gender
roles had been reversed in the original letter.