Comments on Everything I Have Learned About IT Began With My Mother

• Posted by Dennis on October 4, 2010 at 5:00pm EDT

• I *love* the last line of this. And my dad didn't ever, ever use our home computer until just a few years ago. It has always been the province of my mother, so in my case any sort of tech savvy at all is due to her choosing to buy a Mac in the early 1990s.

• Posted by msparker at Charter on October 5, 2010 at 4:30am EDT

• I definitely agree with the contents of this posting! My campus recently hired a woman and mother to be our full time IT specialist and I was delightfully surprised at this as I have rarely seen women in this field, let alone heading the IT department.

• Thank you
• Posted by Brenda , Director, UMKC Women's Center on October 5, 2010 at 7:45am EDT

• Thank you for this post! I saw that tweet yesterday and wanted to respond but had no time. This framing of IT as something one's mother doesn't understand (see all those articles about the iPad as your mom's computer) drives me crazy. We wonder why there's a lack of women in tech fields -- well maybe framing IT as something too difficult for moms to understand helps contribute to that problem. And like you, it's the men in my family who don't get tech, not the women.

• Posted by slgrant on October 5, 2010 at 8:15am EDT

• I am the mother of a 9-year-old, and the one showing him how to defrag the computer and use Scratch to program, so kudos for the IT mom shout-out!

• Hear hear
• Posted by Feminist daughter on October 5, 2010 at 9:00am EDT

• My mom was learning Fortran and Cobol back in the late 1970s-early 80s. She was the one who encouraged her two daughters to take programming classes, not our dad, although he supported the idea too. Neither of her girls has ended up in tech fields, but neither have we ever felt that we weren't able to do that kind of work, just that other things interested us more.

• Posted by Robin2go , Disruptive Technologist at Penn State on October 5, 2010 at 10:15am EDT

• THANK YOU. As both a mother and a tech geek, I found great irony in yesterday's article (I decided to put irritation on the back burner). In my family of five, I am the one who is constantly connected. I am the one the kids make a beeline for when they have any questions related to technology of any sort. I am the one who has to show my husband how to record something on the DVR. And, as a woman, I am the gender people stereotype as a clueless technophobe. Clearly I'm wearing the wrong apron today (but I've got some vacuuming to do and I need to wax the kitchen floor right after I put in the pot roast). I'd love to send you a handwritten thank you note but I need to check with Ward as I'm worried about The Beav, because he can't get past level 2-13 in Angry Birds.

  Your mom would be proud.

• Posted by J.D. on October 5, 2010 at 11:15am EDT
• Same here, Eric. My mother was always the more technologically savvy parent in the house. I recall her programming her own client database and mail-merge programs in BASIC in the early 80s to help run her real estate business. She was the driving force behind getting a computer in the house, and knew the importance technology would play later in my life.

• I married a geek girl, her mother was a geek girl
• Posted by Vince , Professor Emeritus at U of Maryland on October 5, 2010 at 12:45pm EDT
• I married a wonderful techno geek girl whose mother was a techno geek. My mother in law did the first PHD in the USA using a digital computer. My wife soldered together our first computer in 1977, and wrote a book on a computer language while a med student .
  
  I'm the family cook. Man has to do what he can. But who are these guys who don't get it?

• Posted by Jo , instructional designer at USF on October 5, 2010 at 1:15pm EDT
• Thanks for this wonderful, spot-on post.

• Whoa
• Posted by Rachael on October 5, 2010 at 1:15pm EDT
• You are worried about sweeping generalizations that women don't "get" IT, yet you make a sweeping generalization that "There are not enough women who are in technology leadership positions." This is certainly not even close to true at my institution, and I believe statements such as this perpetuate the myth. I'm sure it was unintentional, but perhaps so was Digital Tweed's.

• I agree 100%
• Posted by Bob , IT Director at EAPS on October 5, 2010 at 2:00pm EDT
• I agree 100%. It was my mom who just jumped into the iPad revolution with both feet while my dad remains skeptically chained to his Dell in the upstairs office. Go Mom!

• Explain it to me like I'm a four-year old
• Posted by Erin , Director, Curriculum Innovation & Technology Group at Babson College on October 5, 2010 at 2:15pm EDT
• As a mother who has been in technology for 25 years, I was often the only woman in a room of techie men. I used to get a laugh before big meetings though when vendors, who thought I was there to bring coffee, started to cringe when I took the seat at the head of the table as CIO to run the meeting.
  
  To get the point across about simplifying technology, I'd rather use the line from the movie Philadelphia, "Explain it to me like I'm a four-year old".
  
  Techies, Doctors, Financial Services, etc. often make things WAY too complicated and we could all benefit from experts who can explain things in simple terms.
  
  It is nice to read the comments that salute Moms and Technology though. (It's also nice for me to raise kids that think it's normal for Dads to cook and Moms to set up the router!")

• Posted by Kristen , Associate Director of Residential Life at UMKC on October 5, 2010 at 4:15pm EDT
• Awesome post, Eric, and so on target. I'm a little behind on my blog-reading, but this one caught my eye, and I'm glad I took the time to read it. I could go on and on about the perception of women in tech leading to the dearth of women leaders in tech (and I have), but I think you've said it brilliantly here. Rock on.