Boy Scouts accepting girls. Girl Scouts not happy.

Parent Cafe
61

@intparent I also appreciated how inclusive GS is… my daughter belonged to a troop with two leaders, one of them a gay mom. To say this was not an issue is an understatement. The general opinion of GS inclusivity was a boon at cookie time: we’d set up our tables at a grocery store in a neighborhood where a lot of gay people lived and sales were through the roof. It was the residents’ way of supporting an organization that dealt with homophobia in a most open-minded way. We had two girls get their Gold Award, my daughter stopped at whatever was just below it. In their junior year in high school (yes, the troop lasted that long) they had earned enough money for a cruise to the Bahamas. Yes, some eyerolling greeted that decision, but it was their decision and that’s what they did.

I almost think that BS decision to allow girls is a measure to prop up the Boys Scout as an organization, an organization that hasn’t adapted well to 21st century mentality. I can’t think that it will do anything positive for GS…

62

“I’m against it. When I was in Boy Scouts, there was a lot of backpacking: hiking 10 miles a day with a 50 pound pack and going several days without a shower. Would most girls be physically able to do that? Would they want that experience?”

My female child, and her friends, certainly could have and does so frequently. Plus, the biggest ages for scouting are elementary and middle school years not high school years. Before the onset of puberty in males, which tends to be later than females, boys don’t really have a physical advantage. Even at older ages, with so many males spending so much time gaming online, many male teens, even if not overweight, have what my daughter’s friend calls “noodle bodies”. :slight_smile:

63

I’m curious how many people here who support a co-ed scouts program also support the idea of requiring women to register for the draft.

Personally, I support both.

64

I support women registering for the draft but not co-ed scouting.

65

I have no issue with a draft for all regardless of gender, although I hope we’ll never need it. Maybe if people’s daughters are on the line as well, folks will think even harder about the downsides of war.

66

I support women registering for the draft and I also support reinstating the draft.

67

How far the organization has come in a short time! My son is only 17. When he was in kindergarten or first grade, we looked into having him join the Boy Scouts, but recoiled in horror when we went to fill out the application and it required us to sign a statement that we would raise our child to have faith in God.
We recalled the court case when the Boy Scouts rejected two atheist kids. We decided we wanted our son to have nothing to do with an organization that excludes children and leaders who happen to be homosexual or atheistic. Credit to the organization for evolving to be more welcoming of all children! All children are precious, and no one deserves to have to be the only one of their friends who is left out of the Boy Scouts because the Boy Scouts won’t let them join.

68

@TheGreyKing Why do you think the Boy Scouts allow atheists to join? It’s my understand that this bar has remained. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/10/11/the-boy-scouts-will-finally-admit-girls-but-open-atheists-are-still-banned/

69

I don’t support a draft for anyone, but if we do have it, it should apply to all.

I was never a GS. I think I recall expressing some vague interest in Brownies at some point, but my mother said no, all the troops she knew of did nothing but girly stuff and none of the camping and hiking and so forth, so forget about it.

70

I was a Girl Scout and got whatever they called the Gold Award back then. We had a fabulous active troop. Lots of camping and backpacking, we organized a city-wide clean up of the C and O Canal and got Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas to pick up the first piece of trash. (His lobbying efforts had helped it become a National Historical Park a year or two earlier.) We lobbied for more practical uniforms and when I was a rep to the National Girl Scout Council it was one of the things I tried to get changed. (They did become more practical eventually.) My Girl Scout camp experience included a week of hiking the Appalachian Trail.

DH was an Eagle Scout and had a good experience too. I wasn’t too impressed with the BS leadership when my kids were little so we gave it a pass, but I’m sorry they didn’t have the experience.

Edited to add at 12 - I went backpacking 10-12 miles a day with a 40 pound pack.

I’m in favor of a year of community or military service for everyone of either gender.

We did not have girly badges like how to be stylish in my day that I can remember - we did have cooking and sewing, but those are useful skills for boys too.

As someone who went to a single sex high school and experienced Girl Scouts - I think there’s a lot to be said for single sex institutions.

71

I think TheGreyKing is just giving credit to BSA for changing on two of the three Gs. As of now, atheists would still be excluded.

One other piece of history that’s relevant: until a few years ago, many BSA units were chartered (or “owned”) by public entities like public schools. BSA ended all of those charters, however, because it was becoming clear that public entities would not be able to sponsor organizations that discriminated on the basis of religion, and possibly sex or orientation, either. So currently, all charter organizations are supposed to be private entities–like clubs and churches–that are free to discriminate in those ways if they wish. This is why I was pleasantly surprised when BSA changed its rules on gay scouts and leaders–because it didn’t really have to do it. In fact, it probably lost more membership than it gained by doing so. So I don’t think these decisions are driven entirely by pragmatic concerns–I think they are also driven by changing views within the membership and leadership of BSA. I’ll bet they did internal polling on admitting girls before doing so as well. I know they did on changing the rules on gay people.

72

“When I was in Boy Scouts, there was a lot of backpacking: hiking 10 miles a day with a 50 pound pack and going several days without a shower. Would most girls be physically able to do that? Would they want that experience?”

The answer to both questions (which I can’t believe are being asked, btw) – thousands of them yes. And as someone who accompanied kids on just such a trip when my daughter was 12, I can tell you that it was the boys who complained the most. The girls were the first to summit, got tired of waiting for the lagging boys, so they came down, and summited again with the whining boys. I suppose it was just the dynamics of that particular group, but ever since then I’ve had my suspicions about boys’ toughness :wink:

In college, my daughter spent three summers with an Outward Bound-like organizations. She took young people up 14,000 foot mountains; led them out safely after they were being stalked by a bear in the Sierras, rode a bike from Seattle to San Francisco with a group of high schoolers. She’ll be the first one to tell you tales of boys crying (literally crying) because they’re tired.

When push comes to shove, prima donnas come in both sexes.

73

@Hunt I’m sure that they have a ten year plan to sync up with the global scouting community. Two Gs now sync. If the rest of the world has a G requirement then that would be the last to go. You had to eliminate the exclusion on gay scouts to attract girls who would not have tolerated that.

74

Duty to God is in the Boy Scout oath. Guess I am surprised people would not know its a religious based organization. In my area, local churches typically sponsor packs/troops. The churches typically do not to anything to run the packs/troops. Sometimes meeting space is used at the church. Someone from the church often needs to sign charter docs. But day to day running of the pack/troop does not involve the church.

75

There may also have been significant pressure from external donors in the 2012-2013 time frame.
http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2012/11/intel_will_end_support_for_ore.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ups-stops-boy-scout-funding-over-anti-gay-policy/
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/NATL-Merck-Boy-Scouts-BSA-Funding-Gay-Homophobia-183023141.html
http://theexaminer.com/stories/news/att-ceo-commits-ending-ban-gay-boy-scouts-leaders

The BSA had to face the issue for real when the sponsoring churches, donors, and general public no longer were all on the same side of the issue (due to the donors and general public becoming much more gay-accepting over the previous decade).

76

The Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts organizations both have plenty to like and plenty to dislike, and there is so much variation across troops and across different levels of organization (national, state, local councils, individual troops). I think providing more options for girls who are not satisfied with GS is a good thing, and if GSUSA is so unhappy about it, they should take a look at why these girls are not interested in the programs they offer.

My experience with the GS included 2 years of participation with a local troop and 10+ years at a wonderful, rustic camp, where outdoor activities were central. I hated my experience with the local troop, which like many others described here focused on things like cookies and fashion shows. But I loved, loved, loved my Girl Scout camp, consider it a huge part of making me who I am today, and I would never trade it for a fancier or co-ed camp experience.

Overall, I’ve been disappointed in GSUSA in recent years because no other organization has quite the reach they have to bring outdoor experiences to girls, but they are closing camps left and right. Our local CEO argued that they should close our camp because girls weren’t interested in a place without boys and cell phones and computers (to an audience of girls who loved just that). I recently was perusing the GS badge website to learn about the new STEM and outdoor badges, and while it was cool to see those, looking at the badges as a whole made me feel like I was walking in the pink aisle at the toy store. If you are an organization for girls, to what extent do you cater to what you think girls want (and what many girls do want) versus offering opportunities for girls to be pushed outside their comfort zone and discover new interests? I don’t know the answer to that, but there are clearly many girls who are not satisfied with the Girl Scouts programming available to them.

I’m disheartened (really, kind of disgusted) by the posters here and elsewhere who claim that girls can’t handle the programming in Boy Scouts or that girls should just take what they’ve been offered in Girl Scouts. Many women hike and backpack and do all kinds of physically difficult things. I also know of at least one Girl Scout camp that is entirely focused on backpacking. As for the value of single-gender environments, women’s colleges (and a few men’s) still have a role to play and many women seek those out and have great experiences there. Most elite colleges were all male until relatively recently, too. Do you also think they should not have gone co-ed?

I have also led wilderness trips for teenagers, at GS camp and elsewhere, co-ed and single gender, for as long as a week. I’ve had all-girls trips where they just wanted to read magazines and where a kid freaked when her shoes got wet. But I also had all-boys trips where the kids just wanted to play Magic the Gathering. And gung ho groups of boys and girls. My favorite trip ever, though, was a week long co-ed trip. The hormones were fine.

By the way, nobody should be backpacking with a 50 lb pack, no matter their gender. If your pack is that heavy you are carrying something unnecessary. My pack for a week with food and water weighs 25-30 lb.

77

The BSA operates several high adventure camps. No showers, bugs, bad food. One of them is Philmont in New Mexico, and troops can opt for extremely strenuous courses taking them 100 miles. They get the 100-miler award upon completion, and there is a service component. We have sent girls to Philmont as well as Northern Tier, which combines hiking and canoe travel.

Regarding the spiritual component of scouting. In my experience, most scouts who are not regular church goers fulfill that requirement by discussing spirituality with a parent. In our area, it is viewed more as an opportunity for reflection.

78

I also found the religious requirements to vary by troop/pack. And leaving it to parents was more likely from what I saw in Cub Scouts versus Boy Scouts because the former often had a lot of parental involvement and the latter less. And I suspect that a non-religious kid could fake his/her way through the religious aspects. Though in out of the closet atheist would have a much tougher time.

79

@doschicos

Boy Scouts and Cub scouts are separate experiences and it makes no sense to conflate the two. Boy Scouts has a minimum age of 11, which roughly corresponds to when boys start puberty. Some activities like Philmont have a minimum age of 14.

80

A big thank you to my fellow scout leaders out there, GS, BSA, and other, whether we agree or not. I’m a GS leader and I also appreciate boy scouts. I am also a Gold Award volunteer in our council, working to raise the profile of the award. For those of you who say it is not recognized, I would like you to know that the state level American Legion (!) now allows girls (with a Gold Award) to compete for their formerly Eagles only leadership scholarship. A couple of years ago a girl won it. So, if the American Legion recognizes the Gold, I am guessing others do as well. Also it seems from what they are saying like they forget the value of scouting goes way beyond the highest award. My brother has lifelong great memories of scouting…ending at the Life scout level, not Eagle.

Count me as a person who appreciates the opportunity for a single gender organization for our teens. The troops (GS or BSA) go with the leaders. I predict that many volunteers, like me, will not be comfortable leading camping or other trips with teen leadership that mix boys and girls. Too much work and worry for my volunteer life. If our girls want to do pedicures, then I will try it and see if i like it. If they want to shove some chicken and potatoes in a foil packet in the fire and then eat the half cooked product well then i’ll try that also. It’s all good.