Girl Scout Survey Says Young People Less Likely to Cheat, Use Drugs

A new survey of 3,263 children in grades three to 12 is full of hopeful news for parents:

• Nearly 66 percent of surveyed children said they would not cheat on a test, compared to half surveyed in 1989.
• More children said they intend to vote in the future and give money to charity.
• Eighty percent said they plan to become volunteers in their communities.
• Almost 60 percent said it is important to be around people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, and agreed with the statement, "Gay and lesbian relationships are okay if that is a personal choice."
• Only 18 percent of the girls said they would have sex.

In 1989, 46 percent of children in the survey said they would refuse an alcoholic drink if offered one at a party. That number went up to 58 percent in the current survey. Only 18 percent of children in 2009 think smoking is acceptable, compared to 25 percent of those surveyed in 1989.

Harris Interactive performed the survey of children in the third to twelfth grades for the Girl Scout Research Institute.

Study Says Parents Wait too Long to Talk about Sex

A UCLA study has revealed that more than 40 percent of teenagers had sex before their parents ever talked to them about safe sex, sexually transmitted diseases or birth control.

A Dec. 8 article on the news website livecitizen.com reported on the research:

Health experts claim that teens would rather learn about sex from their parents and that they are more likely to delay their first sexual encounter and practice safe sex if their parents talk to them about it.

The study, published in Pediatrics, involved 141 families enrolled in the Talking Parents, Healthy Teens program. Parents and their teens, aged between 13 to 17, responded to questions about 24 issues regarding sex and sexuality, pregnancy, puberty, birth control, and homosexuality. ...

Families were surveyed four times, once at the beginning of the study, then again at three, six and 12 months.

The results of the study were staggering: more than half of the parents reported that they had not discussed 14 of the 24 sex-related topics by the time their adolescents had begun genital touching or oral sex with partners.

Author Extolls Value, Power of Educating Girls

In an interview with the book-focused website Goodreads, author Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea; Stones into Schools) emphasized the necessity of increasing educational opportunities for girls around the world:

Today there are 78 million female children who can't go to school (120 million children in total) because of slavery, poverty, religious extremism, gender discrimination, and human trafficking.

When a girl gets an education to at least a fifth-grade level, three important things happen: Infant mortality drops significantly, population explosion is curbed, and the basic quality of health improves dramatically.

From my own perspective, the first thing that happens is that girls teach their mothers how to read and write. ... That's very powerful because a woman can then understand what's going on in the outside world.

Are Some Colleges Discriminating Against Female Applicants?

In a Dec. 14 Washington Post article, Daniel de Vise reported that federal investigators will soon begin looking into accusations that colleges and universities in the Washington, D.C., area have been discriminating against female applicants as a means of retaining gender balance among students:

Anecdotal evidence suggests that some schools are favoring men by admitting them at higher rates than women to try to preserve a male-female balance on campus. Conventional admissions-office wisdom dictates that colleges dominated by either sex are less appealing to applicants in general.

De Vise noted that four prominent schools in the area all admitted a higher percentage of male applicants than female applicants in 2008:

• William and Mary admitted 43 percent of its male applicants and 29 percent of its female applicants in fall 2008, according to its institutional data.
  
• Vassar College in New York's Hudson Valley admitted 34 percent of the men who applied and 21 percent of the women.
  
• Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania admitted 19 percent of male applicants and 14 percent of female applicants.
  
• Wesleyan University in Connecticut admitted 30 percent of the men and 25 percent of the women.
  
• Female applicants far outnumbered male candidates at all four schools.

Study: Overweight White Women Earn Less

Many teen girls who are struggling with their weight got some bad news recently, as studies conducted by Cornell University and the US Department of Labor Statistics revealed that overweight white women earn less money than do their slimmer colleagues.

• According to the studies, if a white woman gains 64 pounds or more, her wages are likely to drop by 9 percent.
  
• Being obese causes a wage loss of 12 percent.
  
• Also, taller women earn more money. Dr. Gordon Patzer found that women who are 5 feet seven inches or taller make $5,000 a year more than women of average height (5'3")
  

Half of Teen Girls at Risk for STI Exposure

Researchers with the Indiana University School of Medicine have determined that as many as 50 percent of teen girls may be exposed to one of three common types of sexually transmitted infections within two years of becoming sexually active.

A Dec. 7 article by Megan Brooks of Reuters Health provided the following information about the study:

• Researchers followed 386 urban adolescent girls aged 14 to 17 for up to 8 years.
• Within two years of becoming sexually active, half of the girls were infected with at least one of three common sexually transmitted organisms that cause chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis, respectively.
• The researchers found that a quarter of the women had acquired their first STI by age 15, most often Chlamydia.
  

"Repeated infections were very common," study investigator Dr. Wanzhu Tu said in the Reuters article. "Within 4 to 6 months (depending on the organism) after treatment of the previous infection, a quarter of the women were re-infected with the same organism."

NFL Flag Football Program Proving Popular Among Young Girls

A flag football program sponsored by the National Football League is luring thousands of young people out of the stands and onto the gridiron. And many of those new players are girls.

New York Daily News sportswriter Kristie Ackert described the program’s growth – and the increased participation of girls – in a Nov. 27 article:

NFL-funded programs have more than 100,000 boys and girls playing in co-ed leagues, and the demand for girls-only leagues is growing quickly, according to Samantha Rapoport, manager of the NFL's flag football program.

Florida elevated the sport to interscholastic varsity status in 2002, and Alaska soon followed. Now the NFL is funding start-up high school programs in 10 other states.

The middle school girls would like the city to be next.

"If they don't have flag football, I think I will go to the principal and ask for it," said 13-year-old Fizza Masood, who plays for the team from Q217 in Queens. "Maybe if they advertised they'd see when girls learn that they can play football too, they want to play."

Sexting-Related Harassment Causes Florida Teen to Kill Herself

The September suicide of a 13-year-old Florida girl is believed to be the second teen suicide in the nation that is connected to “sexting,” or the transmission of explicit photos via cell phone or computer.

Andrew Meacham of the St. Petersburg Times reported on the tragedy in a Nov. 29 article:

At the end of the school year at Beth Shields Middle School, the taunting became so bad that Hope Witsell's friends surrounded her between classes. They escorted her down hallways like human shields, fending off insults such as "whore" and "slut."

A few days before, Hope had forwarded a nude photo of herself to a boy she liked … The image found its way to other students, who forwarded it to their friends.

School authorities learned of the nude photo around the end of the school year and suspended Hope for the first week of eighth grade, which started in August. About two weeks after she returned to school, a counselor observed cuts on Hope's legs and had her sign a "no-harm" contract, in which Hope agreed to tell an adult if she felt inclined to hurt herself, her family says.

The next day, Hope hanged herself in her bedroom. She was 13.

A Dec. 2 article by Michael Inbar of TodayShow.com reported that Witsell's death was similar in nature to the March suicide of 18-year-old Jesse Logan who "killed herself in the face of a barrage of taunts when an ex-boyfriend forwarded explicit photos of her following their split."

Pop Star Says Global Education Essential to Secure Future

Many of the world’s poorest children have no access to an education – and many societies still struggle to educate girls and young women. The challenge of providing a quality education to all young people remains both a danger to society and a path toward a more peaceful future.

In a Nov. 13 article on the website of The Economist, pop star Shakira described her efforts to end the education gap:

In today’s world there are still 72 [million] children who are denied the opportunity to go to school and 226m adolescents who don’t attend secondary school.

My foundation in Colombia, Pies Descalzos ("Barefoot"), has proved that the poorest children can be educated. For less than $2 a day per child, our schools provide food, education and counselling services to thousands of students. Our schools help underprivileged children grow in sustainable ways and provide them with the tools they need to break out of the cycle of poverty. …

I refuse to believe that it isn’t possible to educate every child. By establishing a Global Fund for Education in 2010 we will invest in these children’s future -- and help to secure our own.

Girls as Young as 3 Worry About Weight

A study that examined how little girls ages 3 to 6 years old react to images of small-waisted, beautiful princesses like Disney's Belle (from "Beauty and the Beast") or "Cinderella" has revealed a troubling prevalence of weight worries among girls as young as age 3:

• Researchers had half the 121 girls in the study watch a princess movie while others watched films without images of beautiful women.
  
• After the movies were over, the little girls tended to "play Princess" but they did not fixate on the characters' appearances.
• However, the researchers noted that 31 percent of the girls in the study told them they always worry about being overweight, and 18 percent said they sometimes worry about being too fat.
  

"We need to help our children challenged the images of beauty, particularly thinness, that they see and idolize, and encourage them to question how much appearance should be part of their self worth," said Dr. Stacey Tantleff-Dunn of the University of Central Florida, author of the study. "We should help them build a positive self image with an appreciation for many different types of body attributes."

This study appeared in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Is Chemical Exposure or Obesity to Blame for Early Puberty Among U.S. Girls?

For many adolescent girls in the United States, changes associated with the onset of puberty (such as breast development and the appearance of body hair) appear to be occurring at younger-than-expected ages.

Some experts believe early puberty may be the result of exposure to certain chemicals, while others say it could be another effect of the nation’s childhood obesity problem.

Meagan Kelleher of WDAF-TV (Fox4) in Kansas City addressed the topic in a Nov. 9 article on the station’s website:

Some believe [early puberty] can be linked to chemical exposure, specifically Bisphenol-A. It's the substance known as BPA that's been in baby bottles and is still in some other plastics.

But the doctors believe earlier puberty is largely related to the growing obesity problem in kids.

"The more adipose tissue or fat cells there are in the body, the higher the circulating estrogen levels," Dr. [Daryl] Lynch said.

Those higher levels result in the female changes. Dr. Lynch said earlier puberty puts girls at higher risk of sexual abuse, teasing or bullying, mental health disorders and short stature as adults. Those are more reasons to help kids control their weight since it might help delay puberty.

Philly Man Continues to Fight for Girls’ Rights to Play School Sports

For the past 20 years, Robert H. Landau has waged a series of legal battles with Philadelphia-area school districts to ensure that girls have equal opportunity to play sports.

According to a Nov. 29 New York Times article by Katie Thomas, Landau didn’t intend to become a community activist – but he hasn’t shied away from many challenges since he began to fight for girls’ rights:

Landau estimated he had filed at least 30 complaints, most contending unfair treatment of girls, with the Office for Civil Rights, the division of the federal Education Department that enforces the gender-equity law known as Title IX. His work has led to a change in practices at the school and district level in suburban Philadelphia.

Landau's activism began in 1989, when his daughter started playing field hockey at Cheltenham. ... Landau learned that many of the boys’ coaches had full-time jobs as teachers in the district, but the girls’ coaches did not. "In my own limited way, I somehow realized this was not good," he said. …

A neighbor who worked for the Office for Civil Rights encouraged Landau to file a complaint. He did, and the school district eventually added girls’ soccer and volleyball, and built softball fields. …

Soon, parents at other schools enlisted his help, and Landau continued to spot unfair treatment.