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Title IX: City vs. Suburbs

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Cadet, Jun 17, 2009.

  1. outofplace

    outofplace Well-Known Member

    Couldn't it also be the cultural influences in urban areas are behind the suburbs? Just because things are one way in the suburbs does not mean they are that way everywhere.

    Again, I'm not talking about some natural difference between boys and girls. I'm talking about the ideas and influences they grow up with, which aren't the same in all places.
     
  2. I Digress

    I Digress Guest


    My daughter hates sports. Whatever. Her choice. But it's not because she's girl. It's who she is. There are boys that hate sports too. I don't know what it is you're tying to say. Girls only get involved with sports because their parents expect them too? Girls really aren't interested in sports because, well, they're girls? Girls are different from boys, they pee sitting down and so they don't like sports. Again, the stats bear out.. when sports are offered kids play. Boys and girls. Except apparently not so much in America's cities.
     
  3. outofplace

    outofplace Well-Known Member

    Of course it isn't just a matter of what the parents do. I know it. I keep trying to get my daughter interested, with no luck at all so far.

    But children are influenced by the people around them. Not just parents, but teachers, peers and other family members. What I'm saying is that perhaps the difference is that not as many of those people of influence push girls into athletics as they do for boys in some areas. That could account for part of the difference between the suburbs and urban areas.
     
  4. Jake_Taylor

    Jake_Taylor Well-Known Member

    I've been in small-to-medium-sized towns where the "popular" girls didn't play sports. Maybe they were cheerleaders, but going out for basketball or softball, or whatever was just considered something for the butch girls or the tomboys. It's a backward way of thinking, but it still exists in certain area. I don't know if it's that way in any inner cities or not.
     
  5. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Girls who play sports are not the so-called "popular" girls in many places. That doesn't say anything about girls' relative interest in sports. Those two factors do not correlate.

    Do cheerleaders outnumber so-called tomboys in those (or any other) areas? Then maybe you could say girls playing sports isn't "the thing to do."
     
  6. Cadet

    Cadet Guest

    There are a lot of cultural/circumstantial reasons why children do or do not participate in sports. This article touched on one reason, which was the cultural expectation that daughters help with the home while sons are free to play. But there will always be others, including cost, unsupportive parents and peer influence.

    But I would bet that for every girl who doesn't go out for the team because it's not the "girly" thing to do, there is a boy who HAS gone out for the team because it's the "manly" thing to do, regardless of his interest in or passion for the sport. Those societal pressures work both ways.

    As has been shown, girls will respond to opportunities if they are available. Title IX and programs that have evolved from the law are about making sure the opportunities are available. I think this article serves as a reminder that there are still enclaves, particularly urban areas, where the opportunities are lacking.
     
  7. 21

    21 Well-Known Member

    I have to believe suburban parenting includes heightened expectations for the kids to be involved in more activities, try everything, and certainly more of the group-planning (ie, a dozen moms deciding to put all the girls in the same activity, on the same team, etc).

    But the study in the Times doesn't really address whether those city girls are doing some other activity instead of sports. Do they take dance? Music? Shouldn't the focus be on doing ANY extracurricular activity, not just sports?
     
  8. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    The problem is at is always in between the roughest city schools and toniest in the suburbs: money. The suburban girls haven't just been playing school sports. They've been in independent and travel leagues since a single-digit age. So have the boys. There are a lot of kids, I'm sure, in the city schools who look at the limited resources, realize the level of competition out there, and say, "No thanks."

    Even by middle school, school sports, except for football, are almost beside the point for anyone serious about playing in college or at a higher level.
     
  9. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    The popular girls when I was in high school were indeed either cheerleaders or the daughters of prominent businessmen in town. But the girls basketball coach (who was also defensive coordinator in football at the time, this was the 80s after all) was an asshole who may have hated girls more than us. The only butch girl I knew of in the whole school (and boy was she butch) did not participate in athletics.

    My alma mater got good in girls basketball in the early 90s after the asshole left, and won a state championship not long thereafter.
     
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