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

Rating:
Summary: This is an outstanding book for every parent.
Review: As a 50 year old grandmother who did not have the benefit of Title IX, this book lays out all the reasons why we should raise our daughters differently than society currently dictates. An athletic girl learns early about how to deal with prejudice and competition; it is a skill that does not come always easily to the non athlete. This book shows clearly and concisely how important it is to prepare our daughters for the world; there is a staggering set of statistics to show why girls everywhere should be encouraged to participate in sports. In this day and age when we are trying earnestly to figure out why so many teenage girls get pregnant or involve themselves in self destructive behaviors, this book gives a pretty clear roadmap of how to protect your own daughter.

Rating:
Summary: This is an outstanding book for every parent.
Review: As a 50 year old grandmother who did not have the benefit of Title IX, this book lays out all the reasons why we should raise our daughters differently than society currently dictates. An athletic girl learns early about how to deal with prejudice and competition; it is a skill that does not come always easily to the non athlete. This book shows clearly and concisely how important it is to prepare our daughters for the world; there is a staggering set of statistics to show why girls everywhere should be encouraged to participate in sports. In this day and age when we are trying earnestly to figure out why so many teenage girls get pregnant or involve themselves in self destructive behaviors, this book gives a pretty clear roadmap of how to protect your own daughter.

Rating:
Summary: Girls high school basketball coach [e-mail]
Review: In 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed. It was called Title IX. Originally inspired to insure equal pay for female university professors, the real impact of Title IX was an explosion in girls' and womens' sports because the law required equal funding for all federally funded educational institutions. While only 20% of all institutions are in full compliance, we have seen an explosion in girls'/womens' sports plus one positive consequence for girls that no set of constitutional statutes can provide: " empowerment. " This book documents the overwhelmingly positive effects that playing sports has on self-esteem, schoolwork, career success and interpersonal/love relationships. Thoroughly written with entertaining true stories, the authors show how and why sports are so important to girls' lives. But they do not shy away from the hazards, pitfalls and confusion that girls face from the clash of mixed societal messages let alone the boys/men who can only see girls as sexual objects. Suggestions are made for sustaining the positive and preventing the negative. I am a girls' high school basketball coach. I also teach and coach young girls in basketball. Teaching and encouraging successful participation in girls' sports has become an important part of my life's work. Many of the issues that are brought up in the book are things I have had to deal with or are concerns that parents bring up with me. Any parent who sincerely wants their daughter to have a successful and rewarding experience with sports will benefit from this book because it lends support and offers advice based on experience. Like me, it is obvious that the authors love to work with girls and are very dedicated to promoting participation while erasing discrimination and inequality. It inspired me to continue my work and taught me a few things also. It was also a fun read. I didn't want the book to end. If, like me, you love working with girls, this is a must read.

Rating:
Summary: Girls' High School Basketball Coach
Review: The Equal Rights Amendment was passed in 1972. It was called Title IX. Title IX was originally intended to deal with equal pay for female university professors. It was really about a historic change involving the way we view girls and sports. It lead to an explosion in girls' and womens' sports. And in so doing, it did something for girls and women that no set of constitutional statutes could ever provide: " empowerment. " This is a thoroughly written and exciting book that examines and documents the tremendous impact that sports has had on girls' lives. The various aspects of this impact are explained with true and entertaining stories of girls and the sports they play....the effect on their self-esteem, schoolwork, family lives, careers and sex/love lives. While the overall effect of sports is highly positive for girls who participate, there are hazards, traps and pitfalls that parents, educators and coaches need to be aware of. And as far as girls' sports has come, they still endure resistance and ridicule from men who can only relate to girls as sexual objects. All of this is discussed. This book will be highly useful for parents who want to introduce or encourage their daughters to participate. Many of the issues that are discussed are problems I have to deal with in my coaching or are issues that are constantly being brought up by parents of the girls I work with. I am convinced that the best way to keep a girl away from dangerous people and questionable activities is to get her involved in sports. Her grades will go up and you are likely to see an increasingly happy daughter. This great book will give support to parents who wish to encourage their daughters and also instruct the concerned parent or educator about how to go about making sports a positive experience that will change her life for the better.

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Summary: It all makes sense!
Review: There doesn't seem to be very much information about girls in sports - especially parenting information. This book is wonderful. It provides hope, saddness and grit of what is really happening!

Being the parent of a very athletic 14 year old girl - who is sometimes thought of as "different" because of her drive, goals and commitment - this book helps me understand her - and provides me with ways to help her achieve her goals!!

Rating:
Summary: great
Review: This is a great book, i read it for a class, Gender and Sport, in college. Very helpful to anyone or to parents in particular.

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Summary: Sports can help girls grow up to be strong women.
Review: We aren't ourselves serious athletes. Jean was part of the pre-Title IX generation, when opportunities for girls in sports were limited. Gil grew up during the 60s, when, basically, all bets were off. He wrestled some and played football in junior high, but by high school he was out of sports entirely. So we didn't approach our subject as jocks. We did approach it as the parents of a 6-year-old daughter. Like a lot of new parents we made an informal survey of the cultural landscape to see what kind of world we had brought our daughter into. This was, of course, after she was born, when it was too late to turn back. Some of what we encountered disturbed us. While we had every confidence in the resilience, determination and eventual success of our daughter, it was clear that all was not right with the way girls respond to modern culture -- something wrong with the culture, that is, not with the girls. We were losing them. As they crossed the threshold to adulthood many of them go into a sort of retreat. Where before they had been brash, confident, sassy, they now might be sullen, forlorn, withdrawn. Of course, some of this is the natural response of a 13-year-old realizing the daunting task of growing up. But some of it was produced by a society that one expert labeled "girl-poisoning." Carol Gilligan, one of the leading theoreticians of adolescence, calls the essential part of girls' identity "voice," and she documents ways in which girls' voices are lost, diminished, misplaced amidst the storms of growing up. Additionally, research has indicated that girls may get shortchanged in the classroom, and that they are bombarded with media images that allow females only decorative or subservient roles in life. Like a lot of people we read and were alarmed by Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia. Here was a clinical psychologist drawing portrait after portrait of wounded girls, coming to her with overwhelming personal problems. Granted, Pipher specialized in girls in trouble. But for us, her book was a disturbing portrayal of dark possibilities lurking in our daughter's future. At the end of Reviving Ophelia, Pipher asks what we as a society can do about this problem. Although she has specific suggestions, her overall recomendation boils down to: reform the culture. And that's fine. We're ready to put our shoulders to the wheel to do that as best we can. But it's a tall order. As parents, we needed something more concrete, more immediate, something we could do in the day to day to inoculate our daughter against the contagion of helplessness that seemed to be sweeping the land. To find the answer, one thing we did was just follow our daughter's lead. She's an active, physical little girl, and so she indicated a possible direction for us to look. Many other people, writers and experts, indicated the same direction. What we discovered was that across the board, girls who are involved in athletics negotiate the hazards of adolescence better, on the average, than girls who remain uninvolved. Girls who play sports are less likely to drop out of school, more likely to go on to college and more likely to graduate college. They tend to get higher scores on their college entrance exams. They are less likely to engage in a whole panoply of self-destructive behaviors. They are less likely to get pregnant, less likely to smoke tobacco, less likely to abuse drugs, less likely to attempt suicide. They have a better body image. While research on the relationship between athletics and self-esteem is just beginning, clearly, there is abundant evidence to tell us that girls who play sports are better equipped to make the difficult passage to adulthood. For our book we talked to young female athletes, their coaches and parents, as well as many other experts in the field. We traveled all over the country, talking to girls in many different cultural environments. Our book is for parents, grandparents, educators, coaches, counselors, social workers, child psychiatrists -- anyone concerned with the health of our children. Most of all, it is for the girls themselves. The young female athletes we spoke with were some of the most amazing people we have ever met. We hope that in reading our book, you'll think so too.