This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/us/boy-scouts-girls.html

The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 2 Version 3
Boy Scouts Will Accept Girls, in Bid to ‘Shape the Next Generation of Leaders’ Boy Scouts Will Accept Girls, in Bid to ‘Shape the Next Generation of Leaders’
(about 5 hours later)
The Boy Scouts of America announced plans on Wednesday to accept girls, marking a historic shift for the century-old organization. The Boy Scouts of America announced plans on Wednesday to broadly accept girls, marking a historic shift for the century-old organization and setting off a debate about where girls better learn how to be leaders.
The group cited the desire to nurture female leaders as a reason for the decision, pitting it against the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., which operates under a similar mission. The Boy Scouts, which has seen dwindling membership numbers in recent decades, said that its programs could nurture girls as well as boys, and that the switch would make life easier for busy parents, who might prefer to shuttle children to a single organization regardless of gender.
“We strive to bring what our organization does best — developing character and leadership for young people — to as many families and youth as possible as we help shape the next generation of leaders,” said Michael Surbaugh, the group’s chief scout executive.
Starting next year, girls will be allowed into the Cub Scout program, which had been limited to boys either in the first through fifth grades or between the ages of 7 and 10. A separate program for older girls will be announced next year and is expected to be available in 2019.
“Dens,” small groups of six to eight members, will be segregated by gender, according to the statement. Packs, or groups of dens, will have a choice: they may accept female dens into existing packs, create new all-girl packs, or remain as all-boy packs.
The decision comes nearly two months after the organization was harshly criticized by the president of the Girl Scouts for what she said was a “covert campaign to recruit girls.”
“I formally request that your organization stay focused on serving the 90 percent of American boys not currently participating in Boy Scouts,” the president, Kathy Hopinkah Hannan, wrote to her counterpart at the Boy Scouts in August.
The Boy Scouts has significantly loosened its membership requirements in recent years. In January, the organization announced a change that paved the way for transgender members. In 2013, it lifted a ban on openly gay members.
The group says it has 2.3 million members between the ages of 7 and 21 and nearly a million volunteers throughout the United States and its territories.
“I’ve seen nothing that develops leadership skills and discipline like this organization,” said Randall Stephenson, the group’s national board chairman. “It is time to make these outstanding leadership development programs available to girls.”“I’ve seen nothing that develops leadership skills and discipline like this organization,” said Randall Stephenson, the group’s national board chairman. “It is time to make these outstanding leadership development programs available to girls.”
The decision was celebrated by many women, but criticized by the Girl Scouts, which said that girls flourish in all-female groups.
“We’ve had 105 years of supporting girls and a girl-only safe space,” said Lisa Margosian, chief customer officer for the Girl Scouts, who added that the organization felt “blindsided” by the announcement. “So much of a girl’s life is a life where she is in a coed environment, and we have so much research and data that suggests that girls really thrive in an environment where they can experiment, take risk and stretch themselves in the company of other girls.”
For families involved in scouting, the announcement led to a scramble of questioning phone calls and frantic Facebook discussions as parents and scout leaders wrestled with tentative plans for the transition. Next year, girls will be allowed into the Cub Scouts program, which had been limited to young boys. A program for older girls is expected to be available in 2019, giving them a path to earn the prestigious rank of Eagle Scout.
The Boy Scouts has offered girls limited access to some programs before, but it has never before welcomed them into its core Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts programs. And the introduction of girls still does not mean that Boy Scouts’ gatherings will necessarily include both genders. The smallest groups of Cub Scouts will continue to be single sex.
Michael Ver Duin, a third-generation Eagle Scout and troop leader in Grand Haven, Mich., said he was “super excited” for the change — an opportunity, in his view, for girls to have the same choices as boys.
“The closest I’ve had to a negative comment is ‘I know there will be some who do not welcome this,’ ” he said. “The two biggest things I see as a challenge to explain to parents are, ‘What kind of problems are you going to have if you had boys and girls on the same camping outing?’ and ‘Do boys need time to be boys and girls need time to be girls?’ ”
Others were deeply skeptical. Joseph Carballo, 70, has been with the Boy Scouts for 30 years, most of that time as a scoutmaster of Troop 65, in the Bronx. His two sons, both Eagle Scouts and now in their 30s and 40s, have been with the organization since the 1990s. “And we all have the same view: no girls,” he said.
“Boys and girls should have separate organizations for activities,” Mr. Carballo explained, as his troops entered the cafeteria of St. Helena’s Church for their Wednesday night meeting. “There is an organization for girls. It’s called the Girl Scouts.” (His granddaughter, he pointed out, is a member.)
For the Boy Scouts, the change is also a chance to boost its sagging membership. The group says it has 2.3 million members between the ages of 7 and 21 and nearly a million volunteers throughout the United States and its territories. At its peak in the 1970s, the organization, incorporated in 1910, was closer to five million members.
The Boy Scouts has significantly loosened its membership requirements in recent years, but not without lengthy debates among its leaders and members. In January, the organization announced it would accept transgender members. In 2013, the group lifted a ban on openly gay members, and in 2015, it stopped barring gay Scout leaders.
In April, the Boy Scouts began exploring the possibility of opening more widely to girls after receiving inquiries from its members, a spokeswoman for the Boy Scouts, Effie Delimarkos, said. She said the group collected input from families over the summer and, on Wednesday, its directors unanimously voted to allow the expansion.
For some parents, the announcement came as an answer to longstanding complaints that offerings by the Girl Scouts were lacking, particularly for girls with less traditionally feminine interests.
“The problem with the Girl Scout curriculum is that it’s very focused on who your leader is for your particular troop,” said Rebecca Szetela, a mother of four from Canton, Mich. “If you have a mom who’s really into crafts and girlie stuff and being a princess, then that’s what your Girl Scout troop is going to be like. If you have a daughter who’s more rough and tumble, it’s not going to be a good fit.”
Some girls, like Ella Jacobs, 12, of Sebastopol, Calif., have long argued for the chance to be allowed into the Boy Scouts.
“My point has always been that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the Girl Scouts, but they weren’t the right fit for our family,” said her mother, Danelle Jacobs, a lawyer. “Girls should have the choice.”
Brian Seeton, a scoutmaster in Canton, Ohio, predicted that the acceptance of girls would play out much like the acceptance of gay Scouts and leaders. “Parents and kids didn’t care one way or the other,” he said. “It’ll only be an issue for the first couple of years and then it’ll carry on as it always was.”
Bryan Spellman, a scoutmaster in Fishers, Ind., pointed out that there already were girls in some scouting programs, and that while the announcement was somewhat sudden, it would ultimately work out.
“Honestly, I don’t mind it at all,” Mr. Spellman said. “I think Scouting is one of the greatest youth organizations that we have in this nation. And if that’s something that can be shared with all sexes, it can be fantastic.”
He said he suspected not everyone would feel that way. “There’s resistance to change,” he said. “People hate change, and people love tradition.”
Perhaps most vulnerable in all of this, he said, are the girls’ organizations that may be at risk of losing members or potential members. “Everybody knows an Eagle Scout,” he said. But the Girl Scouts’ top award “is just not held as high or as valuable in people’s minds, and I’m not sure why.”