Boy scouts accepting girls. No safe place for boys.

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I wanted to join Boy Scouts when I was little because I preferred the things they did over the things Girl Scouts did. I was very upset I was not permitted to.

I had never donated anything to Boy Scouts because of that. I cannot support a children's organization that excludes children based on their sex. Instead I have always chosen to donate the Boys & Girls Club.

I think girls should be able to join Boy Scouts and boys should be able to join Girl Scouts. I think they should actually combined into a single organization.

In Sweden it was just scouts (no boy or girl groups), I must say that would be my preference.

Here there is Brownies and Boy scouts and some girls attend the scouts but no boys attend Brownies.

I can't say about Scouts but Brownies sucks. Their activities are boring and meaningless and it seems a waste of time. I would much rather see more survival skills and wilderness know-how as opposed to the endless crafts with straws and glitter or singing at homes for the elderly.

Saying that, I think one of the more pervasive problems is that there are very very few male role models. In my daughter's school there has been one male teacher. That is in a school of 350 students. At my younger daughter's playgroup it is all female teachers. It must have a signifiant impact on ALL children to just have female caregivers and teachers for so many years but in particular for male kids (and especially those that come from families where there are few positive male role-models). I wouldn't be at all surprised if boy scouts was run entirely by females too.

Then there’s also the interesting situation of having some rôle models, but with the twist that they all do something you’re not allowed to or don’t have the means to, so you’re sort of expected to turn out like them as an adult, despite having missed the crucial experiences and guidance they had. Oh, and it gets better if your parents are angry for not getting that result when they’ve poured a lot of hard-earned money and time on you.

^^Well with all respect... I have the feeling I would not be the biggest fan of a few of your parents choices and sentiments. But who am I to judge, barely keeping my own head over the water at times.

Confident parents should be all about spreading the net wide for their children in terms of allowing them to connect and learn from a wealth of individuals (of both genders) on their own terms. I remember when I was 5 or 6 and my mother would force me to go out and play on Saturdays and I would just sit in the basement and wait out the time until I could go home again. At this time a woman in her 20s or so connected with me and would invite me around to her flat to play "mastermind" and we would play for hours. I wish I could find this woman and thank her. She literally threw me a life-line, it was so much more than just sitting there playing this game over and over (she must have been bored stiff) it was recognition that everything is "ok" and it's ok to not want to be social and just do this instead. It was also something my mum would never ever have done with me and a level on which she never would have connected and interacted with me at that age and I felt like a "small adult" and that was really a great feeling.

When I see boys growing up in my immediate environment and I see them being in female dominated institutions for such a significant part of their youth, I do worry about them finding similar role-models and adults to connect with in that similar way. At my daughter's playgroup for example the boys are basically viewed as a gang of destructive and loud hooligans and (in my opinion) often get less constructive input from the teachers. They can be destructive and they can be wild, but I don't see much effort being put into re-directing that energy in creative ways. In school, children are forced to be very still and packed into large classes and once again I see boys being humiliated far more often than girls when they can't achieve the required amount of physical stillness and lack of fidgeting. Seriously, these kids are sometimes just 4 years old when they are required to spend much of the day in passive pursuits. It is not really realistic and whilst detrimental to all, it is particularly detrimental for many of the boys who are young starters. In the same vein most boys are then treated (by adults) as built to be able to sustain a certain level of physical assault without even mentioning it. One of my favourite of my daughter's "boy" friends started school young and has had the worst year of school-ground bullying and being pushed about at an age where he can't even verbalise it with ease and my experience is very much that instead of stepping in adults have taken the line that he should just grin and bear it because this is what is expected of a boy in the playground. It would be interesting to see how they would have responded had it been a girl. Or indeed if it had been a boy behaving to a girl in this way.

In my mind, this would be the only reason to have separate sex pursuits like boy scouts as needs might be quite different at certain ages and so pandering to some "middle ground" might be detrimental to both but then if there were more effective and creative adults involved in leading these groups then perhaps it wouldn't be so much of an issue.

So it seems there was indeed a tragedy going on all around me, and I didn’t see it because I was too f****d up to even imagine other people could actually aspire to something better.

I think there are a lot of interesting points to talk about in your post, and also somewhere else I’ve neglected, but not forgotten. I’ve spent way too much time here lately and can’t really spend any more now, but when I come back, I’ll focus on the conversations I left hanging before anything else.

Chronos, I guess I have been lucky then. I can think of no time period in my life when I didn't have male and female friends or when I differentiated in any significant way between the two. Maybe a brief period when I was 12-14 when I mostly had female friends but then I met my best friend at 15 who is male. As a little kid I mostly played with boys then when I started school there was only one other girl in my elementary school class and we always played together with the boys.

Then I was doubly lucky as I had a male nursery teacher, we bonded hugely and often it was just us alone at nursery as I got dropped off very early and picked up very late as my mum was a single mum.

Skilpadde, I don't know how much you have been into primary schools of late. I also don't know if they differ significantly from Sweden. The Swedish schools are certainly very different from UK schools.

(1) Age: In Sweden we start later, like in Norway. Those extra years make a big difference. Expecting kids to sit still and be quiet at 6 or 7 is different from at 4.

(2) Mobility: There is far less need to sit still and be immobile in Sweden. My daughter and I marvelled at how the children moved around, got fruit out of their bags and at the length of their break times and how far into the woods they were allowed to go unsupervised. In the Uk, my daughter has been in a class of 32, jam packed in a small room, some of the kids are only 4 when they start and they have far shorter breaks, far less chance for movement and much stricter relationships between adults and children.

I don't think there is more leeway today - much more expected of kids, in less conducive environments and when they are much younger.

Here's my opinion but it's worthless because I never wanted to join a group in my life, refused the Brownies, and jumped in a canal to avoid the Beavers.

I find it weird that adults get so obsessed with whether kids are better off in single sex environments or not. As adults most people choose to spend time in both, so it makes sense that children should be encouraged to spend at least some time regularly in both to prepare them for adulthood. Mixed groups make sense for children who go to single sex schools and don't have siblings of the same sex, but with most things now being mixed I think there is plenty of room for single sex things. Some children do feel more comfortable in a single sex environment and as long as they do some things mixed I don't see why they shouldn't be able to do some things on their own.

If girls don't like the girl scouts (is this the same as the girl guides?) then change the girl scouts.