Youth Activities in the Church

[bobtheenchantedone]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/78508/

It's nice that several people are happy with the experiences they had with their youth activities and programs, but that doesn't change the fact that lots of others were very disappointed, and that there are definitely inequalities between the male and female youth programs. The biggest one, as I think we've discussed before, is budget; many an activities day leader has asked about doing a pinewood derby for the girls only to find out renting the tracks would take nearly their entire budget, whereas the derby is only one of many activities requiring money that the boys would get to do.

Another unfortunate difference I see is how much work is required (though this one is more subjective). My father was scoutmaster for ages and I saw him contacting everyone in the ward to see what merit badges they could sponsor, heard about the meetings he had with boys just to plan what merit badges to work on, studied his huge chart with the dozens of merit badges each boy could earn and marked their progress toward Eagle, and helped in various Eagle projects that would have whole wards and/or neighborhoods participating. On the other hand, I earned my personal progress without much effort on my part and with only one activity that involved more than myself (and even then it was only a young women activity), and my sister, in frustration, earned it twice over within the space of about two years.

For my part I wish the church wasn't so determined to keep the sexes separate as much as possible. H mentioned that combined activities would be suggested only to be shot down as the women didn't want to do "scout-like activities" but I guarantee there was at least one girl who would have liked to do those activities. (It also bothers me that H implies they only suggested that the women join the men's activities, not that they suggested gender-neutral activites/tried to find common ground. What the hell.) Would it really be so bad if they let the sexes mix a little? Let the more outdoors-y women join in the shooting and hiking and camping with the young men and let the more laid-back men learn some cooking and sewing with the young women? Must we always insist on both separating by sex and catering to the majority?

[Cindy]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/78508/

For my part I wish the church wasn't so determined to keep the sexes separate as much as possible. H mentioned that combined activities would be suggested only to be shot down as the women didn't want to do "scout-like activities" but I guarantee there was at least one girl who would have liked to do those activities. (It also bothers me that H implies they only suggested that the women join the men's activities, not that they suggested gender-neutral activites/tried to find common ground. What the hell.) Would it really be so bad if they let the sexes mix a little? Let the more outdoors-y women join in the shooting and hiking and camping with the young men and let the more laid-back men learn some cooking and sewing with the young women? Must we always insist on both separating by sex and catering to the majority?

In my ward, many of the girls my age would have liked to go hiking and do similar fun activities like the guys got to do, but the YW leaders weren't interested in these kinds of activities, so they would nix any suggestion that we do something like this. Even when we went to girls' camp, we just ended up doing lame crafts and other sedentary things like that. Going off on your own or with some friends for a hike or something else outdoorsy wasn't permitted, since our leaders couldn't imagine why anyone would want to do something like this and accordingly suspected that we must be up to some kind of mischief if we tried.

This was mostly true in my earlier years. The YW presidency we had when I was a Laurel was a little more diverse and better at encouraging a wider range of activities. By then most of the girls in my age group had completely left the church, though.

[Random]

Honestly, I think knowing how to do basic cooking and sewing are important life skills that everyone should learn, along with knowing how to do basic maintenance on a car like Owlet mentioned in her answer (I'm jealous, we didn't learn anything about cars in my YW group!). As Bob mentioned, I finished personal progress in about a year and a half, and I even went so far as to do the requirements for the honor bee, and I completed the requirements for virtue when it was added as a value. I was also incredibly jealous of my brothers and their involvement in scouting, since I was one of those girls who were more interested in "boy" activities than "girl" activities. I've completed most, if not all, requirements for cub scouting, and if it were allowed I would've done all of the boy scouting stuff too. I totally would've joined a venture scout group if there had been one close enough when I was younger. I did try girl scouts, and I completed daisy and brownie before I decided it wasn't working for me.

Like Cindy, a lot of the reason why my YW group didn't do a lot of the "scout-like" outdoorsy activities was because the leaders didn't want to do it. At least girls camp was fun, and I finally got to do a lot of the activities that scouts/YM got to enjoy on a regular basis for one week out of the year. As a beehive I was actually super involved in YW, which is part of the reason why I managed to get my personal progress award so quickly. But as I got older a lot of the activities were only super feminine things that I wasn't interested in like nail painting and how to dress so you look cute and still look modest. I still went to some of those activities, but I was always super disappointed. I can't count how many times I've been jealous of the activities that the YM and scouts got to do while we were yet again having a modest fashion show. Worst.

[Concorde]

I originally had a response to that question written up but I was asked to edit it (it is rather aggressive and comes off as anti-church) and due to laziness I just deleted it. Here it is below:

"Dear Feminism,

I wish to reassure you that your experiences and frustrations are valid. Haleakala offers an interesting perspective, but I must respectfully disagree when he says that he does not believe that your experience can translate to anyone else, because from my experience and the experience of many young women I know, your question rings unfortunately all too true and I don't want you to leave the Board believing that no one agrees with you or understands. I will go ahead and say that I did not complete the Personal Progress award. I did not feel that it was something of value, nor did I feel that it equated to the opportunities the young men in my ward were given. I boycotted it on principle, even though I definitely completed enough of the booklet in my day-to-day life to get the medallion.

The Young Women in my ward were treated like toddlers and pandered to, while the Young Men were treated just like their namesake suggests they should be while they participated in Scouts and Young Men's programs. While we were forced to sew prayer bears (so you remember to pray!) and glue pictures together to make a sacrament quiet book (I kid you not. The fact that they made us make sacrament quiet books at the age of 16 still infuriates me to this day) so that we wouldn't cause a disruption in Sacrament meeting or something, the Young Men learned how to balance finances, how to build and repair objects, to survive and be independent. We were taught to be girly and think of little else besides our future husbands and how we might please them. I asked my leaders if I could plan some beneficial, substantive or even just plain spiritual activities and was rejected. It was not until I complained to my bishop that I was allowed to plan activities where we learned actual life skills and focused on strengthening our commitment to the Gospel.

The men had spiritual thoughts and talked about how to be better men. We painted our nails and had activities and lessons based on "how to have fun! and be peppy! and be pretty! and please your future man! and be the best Mormon housewife ever!" It was all about how to be a better stay-at-home-mom and I was eternally frustrated by it because not all women are guaranteed the ability to get married and then stay at home, nor is staying at home a universal desire! I wasn't building a real testimony or even learning anything mildly useful. I was the only girl my age, about two years removed from all of the younger girls, and while they all loved Young Women's, I wanted nothing more than to bolt for Relief Society where I might actually feel the Spirit. Personal Progress with its oversimplification and desire to slot all young women into one category removes all of their worth outside of the category of homemaker and wife. That, in addition to the extreme vapidness and lack of spiritual and emotional maturity in my Young Women's leaders, was one of the reasons I went to college with zero testimony and part of the reason I had a severe faith crisis these past few years.

So basically, all of that rant aside, I see your point and consider it completely valid. The Church does focus way too much on Boy Scouts. And while the Scouting program is important in teaching Young Men valuable life principles, Duty to God should be considered just as important. I'm not sure why we put so much emphasis on Scouting. I think it's something of a status symbol. Us Mormons love our status symbols and we love making ourselves feel more important. Scouting, with all of its benefits, is one of those things that makes young men feel more important, which is a good thing if they accomplished that themselves. However, I think we've all seen our fair share of young men who were carried through the program by their parents.

If I was ever part of the committee to make Personal Progress better or whatever the group is that does that, I would definitely beef it up more. I would make Duty to God and Personal Progress more difficult to get, because frankly, Personal Progress is a cinch to get. Getting your Eagle is significantly more difficult, which makes it that much more of a status symbol and something that people want to put in the effort for. If Personal Progress was just as difficult, it would mean more if young women earned it. I would include more physical, life-skills type things and encourage young women down all life paths. I cannot tell you how much it would have meant to me if even one of my Young Women's leaders or lessons or anything like that had encouraged me in my future career and education choices, instead of asking me what I could do to help the men make sure I kept my virginity or something like that.

Basically, I could rant about how flawed the Young Women's program is for hours and I have so many more thoughts, but this is long enough as it is and pretty well off-topic by now, so I'll wrap this up by just reiterating again that you are not the only one who sees these issues or is frustrated by them.

-Concorde"

[Concorde]

In retrospect, I was overly anti-Personal progress and mostly just rant-y instead of constructive.

[Whistler]

I agree that there is a major disparity between YM and YW, and also achievement days/cub scouts. I'm a wold cub scout leader right now and we're expected to go to a monthly training meeting and a monthly leadership/bishop meeting in addition to weekly meetings (I don't go because I think it's way overkill). The achievement day leaders don't have monthly training meetings, and I bet they don't have a monthly bishop meeting either. I feel like it sends a message to leaders that boys are more important than girls.

That said, any youth program's awesomeness is really going to depend on its leaders. I do remember thinking some of our YW activities were dull, but I had awesome camp experiences (hiking, rappelling, archery), learned some traditional Laotion dance moves, and learned how to do basic crochet (yeah, I know). I think we had a monthly combined with YM activity too, and it was often playing indoor games or doing baptisms for the dead. I would love for YM/YW to have equal budgets but something I can affect in my membership is just magnifying my calling, and if I ever get called to YW, trying to do activities that promote life skills beyond stereotypical homemaking tasks.

[Genuine Article]

The biggest one, as I think we've discussed before, is budget; many an activities day leader has asked about doing a pinewood derby for the girls only to find out renting the tracks would take nearly their entire budget, whereas the derby is only one of many activities requiring money that the boys would get to do.

Activity Days and Cub Scouts both fall under Primary, so they're paid for out of the same budget. It's entirely up to the Primary president how much money each group gets, so theoretically they could have equal budgets, but nobody ever does that, because, like you said, Activity Days doesn't have any big annual activities associated with it like scouting does. Unnecessary activities in my opinion. I'm a Primary president, and half my annual budget ends up being spent on Cub Scouts, and it kind of blows. 5 boys, who represent 8% of the primary, get 50% of the budget. I realize that my budget is what it is to accommodate Cub Scouts, but that just makes it even more apparent that Activity Days is a non-factor to whoever's making up the budget. Next year I'm going to lobby for more funds and try to divide the money as equally as possible. If the Cub Scouts run out of money, tough. They can buy their own meaningless pinewood derby trophies.

As for renting a track, I just think that's the most wasteful thing ever. Like I said, I'm new, so I tried talking to the Cub Scout committee about raising funds to buy our own track, which would pay for itself after 10 years and make us more self-sufficient, and I was completely shot down. I like Cub Scouts, I really do, but there's just so much hoopla. The pins and the prizes and the beads, and all for what?

As for the YM/YW disparity, I had awesome YW leaders, and that's really what it comes down to I think, not the program itself. As a beehive my YW president was really gung-ho and adventurous and we planned a canoe trip down the Willamette River. We even went to an indoor pool beforehand to practice tipping over in our canoes and how to get back into them without re-tipping them over with people in them. But I also remember that we wanted to take a trip to the coast once, and couldn't get approval for it because the specific place we wanted to go was three hours away, and that was too far to go without a priesthood holder in tow. Umm, excuse me?

Also, I recently heard girls' camp described as being just like scout camp, but without the budget and adventure and with three extra layers of clothing.

[Violet]

Ugh. I think my parents' ward is getting better on the equality front because they have a professional young women's president who likes to encourage the YW of the ward to figure out what they love. Also, the bishop is a former scout master who actually listens to feedback. But growing up, I didn't have that. There were a lot of craft, cooking, and general game nights. Honestly, the best part of YW for me was hanging out with two girls from the ward after we were dismissed.

I think I've ranted about girls' camp to some of you, but I did not have a great experience. Looking back, I can say now that my mental health was a disaster most summers and not being in a place where I had control over my own schedule made it worse (there were some dramatic journal entries for sure). It didn't help that we were all sleep deprived and had no hot water. Then I got the impression that one of my leaders really didn't like me. One year she took my iPod from my backpack (she saw it on the drive up because I had taken it out when the others had started watching a movie). No electronics apparently meant that I had no personal space.

In short, budget and facility inequality, plus leaders who don't work well with YW can make a program an awful experience.

[Portia]

Well, apparently in some circles, handing out condoms to slatternly fifteen-year-old converts would be a good youth activity.

Seriously Concorde gave one of the most compassionate, thoughtful, real answers I've seen in a good year and then this lady is like Y'ALL ARE GONNA BE KNOCKED UP.

/inchoaterage
/notdatingtil16isnotaprincipletogainatestimonyof
/flirtygirlsarentslutsdontshamethem
/unplannedpregnancyisalotmoreproblematicthanslappinganobjectlessononit

[Portia]

My experience in YW was slightly above average. My cadre (mostly a bit older than me) was a very intellectual, nerdy bunch. One got a PhD from Michigan and married a musicologist. One minored in chemistry and married a software engineer and they live a yuppie life up in WA. Her sister and I grabbed sushi a few months ago: she has like 10 novel manuscripts and got a degree in pharmacy. My backyard neighbor did a master's in speech pathology. The guys were almost universally drug addicts and unemployed and dropouts of life. It reads like a mini-capsule of The Problem of Blue Collar Male Jobs Disappearing.

My brother hated everything about his young men group and I don't blame him. His age group sucked. Both of us focused more on academics and our school group of friends.

Personal Progress was an unending screaming match of doom between me and my equally high-strung mother.

Dat classism, though. When I went rogue and started attending a YSA branch up on the east bench, their activities were through the roof. Lavish house parties, trips throughout the state, retreats with top-level speakers. I kind of was neutral towards the women who fulfilled a lot of stereotypes about man-chasing but the dudes were cool and the bishopric members' wives became some of my best friends. But I always have liked hanging around rich people (they are soft where we are hard, etc.). What We Talk About When We Talk About Budgets should include, you know, living in a lower-rung versus upper-tier "boundary" as if God placed you there.

I just think people, regardless of their sex organs, are lazy. I hated EFY (my brother the atheist loved it which confuses me to this day). The enforced maudlin spirituality. Being stranded in small-town Idaho in a Lord of the Flies like social system I couldn't begin to comprehend at 14. The rah-rah-rah-ism (granted I work in the tech industry so maybe that was good training). When I went to go participate in talent shows and choirs and extra classes my flatmates were like "BOYS. NAILS." I was like, um, whatever. My neighborhood YW were more into Harry Potter and plotting our scholarships to BYU than that nonsense. My mom never made me go again. Thank God for tender mercies.

[Portia]

Now I'm all over "BOYS. NAILS." for the record. Late bloomer, I suppose.

[Shrinky Dink]

I agree that there should be a lot more equality in the church, however I don't think it is the church's responsibility to teach my daughters how to camp or my sons how to cook. Overall, I didn't learn anything in Young Women's. I learned how to sew from my grandmother and mom. We went camping as a family at least every two out of three years. I can put up a tent like nobody's business. Need me to repair a pair of pants or make a new skirt? I've got it down. Yes, I think girl's camp should be taken more seriously and the boys should know more than how to cook a tin-foil dinner, but it is up to me to teach my kids what they should know.

[Portia]

I agree that there should be a lot more equality in the church, however I don't think it is the church's responsibility to teach my daughters how to camp or my sons how to cook. Overall, I didn't learn anything in Young Women's. I learned how to sew from my grandmother and mom. We went camping as a family at least every two out of three years. I can put up a tent like nobody's business. Need me to repair a pair of pants or make a new skirt? I've got it down. Yes, I think girl's camp should be taken more seriously and the boys should know more than how to cook a tin-foil dinner, but it is up to me to teach my kids what they should know.

I disagree with this radical individualism. I think there's value in community, and I'm glad I didn't have to learn everything from my parents.

[Katya]

I agree that there should be a lot more equality in the church, however I don't think it is the church's responsibility to teach my daughters how to camp or my sons how to cook. Overall, I didn't learn anything in Young Women's. I learned how to sew from my grandmother and mom. We went camping as a family at least every two out of three years. I can put up a tent like nobody's business. Need me to repair a pair of pants or make a new skirt? I've got it down. Yes, I think girl's camp should be taken more seriously and the boys should know more than how to cook a tin-foil dinner, but it is up to me to teach my kids what they should know.

I agree that we shouldn't expect the Church to educate our children, but if the point (at least in part) of YW activities is to learn useful skills and to prepare for adulthood, then they should be learning actually useful skills that will prepare them for actual adulthood. (And I think that pretending that doing crafts, painting your nails, or shopping represents the real work of adulthood is perhaps more dangerous than not doing any activities at all.)

[bobtheenchantedone]

(And I think that pretending that doing crafts, painting your nails, or shopping represents the real work of adulthood is perhaps more dangerous than not doing any activities at all.)

QFT

[mic0]

Let's keep it real though - camping (and boy scouts in general) isn't useful.* It's a hobby people with the time and money do for fun, just like crafts, painting your nails, and shopping. YM and YW should learn different hobbies, for sure, but maybe teaching them more useful things would be good, too. My ward was full of business folks, though, and so YM and YW had a mix of practical and hobby nights.

(P.S. Of course the best part of mutual was hanging out with boys I had crushes on after the activity. )

*Yo, Haleakfldala, you and I don't disagree on everything!!

[Genuine Article]

One of my film professors taught a post-apocalyptic sci-fi class, so he asked those of us in his other classes, "In a post-apocalyptic world, what do you have to offer? If you come to the gates of a human settlement and they tell you they're only letting you in if you can contribute some useful skill, most of you are screwed. What do any of you have to offer?"

So that's how I decide if learning a particular skill is worth my time.

[mic0]

That's certainly one way to do it!