Raising Our Athletic Daughters: How Sports Can Build Self-Esteem and Save Girls' Lives - Rilegato

Zimmerman, Jean; Reavill, Gil

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0385489595 ISBN 13: 9780385489591

Casa editrice: Doubleday, 1998

Riassunto

Presents true-life stories that bear witness to the power of sports to raise girls' self-esteem

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Jean Zimmerman collaborated with Felice Schwartz on Breaking with Tradition: Women and Work, the New Facts of Life and was the author of Tailspin: Women at War in the Wake of Tailhook.  Her husband,  Gil Reavill, is a freelance journalist.  They live in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, with their daughter.

Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.:

As parents, as educators, as a society we are searching for answers in the  late 1990s, when the cultural environment we provide for our children, and  especially for our daughters, seems increasingly threatening and  malignant. We've been troubled by a picture painted of adolescent girls  today which indicates that our daughters lose something of themselves as  they cross the threshold to adulthood, an essential part of the self that  a leading theorist of female adolescence, Carol Gilligan, has labeled  "voice."

A wake-up call for many parents came with the widespread dissemination of  a survey report by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in  1992. "Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America" is only one of a series  of studies that have painted a dark picture of the way our society treats  its daughters. The survey found a troubling downward arc to related  aspects of girls' lives as they continue through secondary school. They  experience a larger drop in self-esteem than do boys, and as a result are  "more likely to lose interest in activities that challenge them, less  likely to believe in their own abilities, and less likely to question  teachers even when they believe the teachers are wrong."

Other research has reinforced the findings of the AAUW report. Most  recently, the Commonwealth Fund's Survey of the Health of Adolescent  Girls, conducted in 1996-97 by Louis Harris and associates, recorded the  responses of 6,748 boys and girls in grades five through twelve. Two of  the survey's key findings were that girls are at a significantly higher  risk than boys for suffering depressive symptoms and that girls lose their  self-confidence as they mature, in contrast to boys, who gain in  self-confidence as they grow older.

Clearly, there is a pronounced difference in the way young girls and  young boys respond to modern life. The life choices of too many of our  daughters are compromised by drug and alcohol abuse, early pregnancy,  sexually transmitted diseases, eating disorders, self-mutilation,  depression, and suicide. For many, concerns about body image become almost  an obsession. We give radically different messages to our daughters and  our sons, with often tragic results. We are raising a nation of Ophelias,  to use a metaphor made popular by clinical psychologist and author Mary  Pipher, who describes our culture as "girl poisoning."

But one source of optimism registers against this bleak background. Our  daughters are pouring onto the playing fields of this country in  unprecedented numbers. There is a growing awareness that girls enjoy  sports and that sports are good for girls. New evidence is developing  which indicates that girls who play sports tend to avoid the physical,  psychological, and social pitfalls of modern adolescence. For a number of  reasons, playing sports empowers girls.

But something is still not right. For girls today, the desire and the  readiness to play are there, but the way is often blocked. Raising an  athletic daughter--even in this era of ferocious WNBA court pounders and  the triumph of female athletes at both the 1996 Atlanta and 1998 Nagano  Olympic Games--parents may experience and observe situations that are  disconcerting, if not disturbing. Twenty-five years after the passage of  Title IX, the law that mandates equal resources for girls' and boys'  athletic programs, stubborn disparities still exist. It can be as simple  as the number of sports available for girls in your area, either in the  school system or outside of school. Boys might be able to participate in  soccer, baseball, football, basketball, swimming, hockey, martial arts,  while for girls there may be only basketball, gymnastics, swimming, and  soccer. Girls' locker rooms always seem to be smaller, their practice  times less convenient, and their games likely to be scheduled on school  nights, when attendance is sparse, rather than on crowd-friendly weekends.  The girls' teams carpool, the boys' teams get the hired bus.

The national media offer only minimal news coverage of our daughters'  sports heroines or of the women's teams they follow. Studies reveal that  more than 95 percent of national sports coverage pertains to male  athletes. Athletic girls lack female role models. Even if your daughter  loves sports and gets a chance to play, her coaches might be all men.

Our daughters drop out of sports at much higher rates than our sons, and  it tends to happen right on the cusp of adolescence, when girls most need  the benefits athletics can provide. Too many parents have the experience  of seeing their child get involved with some kind of activity--soccer,  say, or gymnastics--when she is in elementary school, only to have her  announce her intention to quit when she reaches junior high. While a third  of high school freshman girls play sports, that percentage drops to 17  percent in their senior year.

Some parents may be surprised by the characterization of American girls  today as eager to play sports. They might see their daughters spending  much more time loafing around the house watching TV than engaging in any  kind of physical exertion. This is the source of a contemporary paradox:  at a time of spiraling interest in sports for girls and women, physical  activity among our children is dropping precipitously. Since 1982, there  has been a 21 percent plunge in the number of teenagers who exercise  regularly. It's as if our society is made up of two cultures,  playing-field culture and television-watching culture, and the two of them  are drifting inexorably apart.

This book represents the fruit of our efforts to talk to those people  most intimately involved with these concerns--girls who play sports. We  spoke to athletes all over the country who are participating in a wide  range of sports, as well as some girls who have dropped out of sports  entirely. We also interviewed professional athletes, parents, educators,  coaches, trainers, program directors, and academics. We talked with girls  in grade school, high school, and college, with their friends and  relatives. Our own friends and family members gave us opportunity for  interviews. The community we live in furnished a rich ground for  investigation. We sifted through studies and reports and delved into the  "secret history" of the female athlete.

We were looking for ways in which the world of sports can benefit our  daughters as well as ways to open that world as much as possible for  them.

We found considerable cause for optimism. The girls we met impressed us  with their energy, poise, and confidence. These are young women who  actively and intelligently make their own choices and shape their own  lives. They help communicate the message that sports, at their best, can  be an expression of the human yearning for excellence. And they provide  reason for us to believe that in raising our athletic daughters, we are  raising girls to be strong, self-determined women.
    

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Doubleday
• Data di pubblicazione: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0385489595
• ISBN 13: 9780385489591
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 254