Surgeons and Dead Guys and Gender Biases (except maybe not)

Have you ever heard this riddle?

“A father and son are in a car crash. The father dies. The son is rushed to the hospital, but right before he receives an operation, the surgeon exclaims, ‘I can’t operate on that boy, he’s my son!’ How is this possible?”

The answer to this riddle is that the surgeon is the boy’s mother. (Highlight that when you’re ready).

I was maybe seven when I first heard this riddle. Nine years have passed since then, in which I have developed ideas of gender norms that I did not have at seven. Unfortunately, this means I did not have a chance to ponder the answer to this riddle at a more mature point in my life, so I have no idea whether I would have guessed that the surgeon is the mom. Up until recently, I actually assumed that most people had heard this riddle as well. I was wrong. I came across an article that sparked my interest. In the article, it mentions the results of an experiment done pertaining to this riddle. Several groups of around 100-200 people were asked the question, and only around 15% deduced the correct answer. Most people could not conclude any possible explanation. So, of course, people called gender bias.

I found the results of the research pretty hard to believe, so I decided to test it out myself on my mom. Her answer was: the dad who died was actually the grandfather of the boy, watching him while his dad was at work.

That was quite a plot twist. I told her to try again.

Her second answer was that the dad in the car was actually the stepfather, and the actual dad was in the hospital. A clever answer, but not what we’re looking for.

After that, she said she had no idea, which came as a surprise. Maybe there was something to the whole gender bias thing after all. I asked about five other people. I got a lot of “gay second father,” a few “the boy was adopted,” one or two “the surgeon is a ghost,” for some reason a “the boy was kidnapped,” and my favorite, “the boy is dreaming.” Only one person of six figured out that the surgeon might be the boy’s mother.

At this point I’m thinking, wow. We live in the twenty-first century and have “Grey’s Anatomy.” A female surgeon is not a crazy concept. What’s up with this gender bias? I asked my mom, “Mom, what’s up with this gender bias?”

“Well, Emi,” she responded, “Maybe it’s not a gender bias at all. Maybe you just confused me with the way you worded the problem.”

RING DING DING 10 points à Mom.

Maybe the issue is not gender bias at all. Just look back at the riddle. I’ll wait here while you scroll up.

The whole structure of wording in the problem insinuates that the surgeon is male. “The father dies, so how come the boy is the surgeon’s son?” Why would that even be a riddle if the answer was something as easy as “mom”? We are intelligent problem-solving human beings with developed common sense, so it’s entirely probable that we just ruled out that stupid option automatically.

I present another riddle as evidence.

“Mary’s mom has four children. The first one is named April, the second May, and the third June. What is the name of the fourth child?”

Well, duh, Mary. That answer’s obvious enough. And yet, people answer July. Why? I doubt it is because they have a bias against the name Mary. Most likely it is because of the way that the riddle is worded. I believe it is very possible that the riddle about the surgeon mom works in a similar away. Maybe we should not be so quick to put a label, like “gender bias,” on something. We label things all the time without taking the entire picture into account. 

But, who really knows, it might just be gender bias. After all there is another version to the riddle that goes “A mom and her daughter were in a car crash, the mom dies, and the daughter is rushed to the hospital. However, the nurse refuses to attend to her, saying “That’s my daughter!” In this case, the nurse is the girl’s father, but everyone knows men can’t be nurses.