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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]One more thought about something I think is a fundamental historical difference between Girl Scouts and cub/boy scouts.  I think BSA has always subscribed to a more rigid definition of what a man should be--this comes through in the fact that most of the program is mandatory and the program presents certain core skills and beliefs.  This also resulted in the historical opposition to gay scouts.

GSA, in contrast, has always been about challenging boundaries and reinventing what it means to be a girl.  The program has nothing mandatory about it, and its contours are defined by what the girls, parents and leaders want to achieve. It's also historically been pretty welcoming of gay scouts, and generally socially progressive.  (My grandmother was horrified when sex Ed was part of the GS program, in the 1930s--not so much that she opposed it but because she didn't want to do it as a leader!).

I think GSA has struggled, in the past decades, with figuring out where to add value in a world where there now are so many options available to so many girls, whereas BSA seems to have a clearer vision of what it's mission is (to provide boys with a certain set of old world skills and values).[/quote]

I think this is a really interesting and insightful comment.  I was a Girl Scout for 12 years (I'm old - no Daisys when I was a kid!) and am now a leader.  GS is clearly trying to give lots of flexibility to its program, which can be fantastic in that it opens up a lot of different experiences, but also can lead to grumbling when a girl can't find a troop or experience that meets her interests.

My son was a cub scout for 4 months, so clearly I don't have any brilliant insight to BSA.  During that time, though, I was really surprised by the amount of family involvement in boy scouts.  It's definitely a fundamentally different philosophy than girl scouts.  Whether it's better or worse is just a decision each family has to make for themselves, but I can see how the expectations for so much family involvement leads to a bunch of sisters feeling left out of what, it turns out, is really a family activity not a boy activity.
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