I want my little girl to know knots, how to make a campfire, emergency preparedness, etc. Sure it’s great that she knows the difference between no. 10 and no 15 cans of canned vegetables for dinner tonight but it’s better if she can help the choking man at the local restaurant or can help save a drowning victim. It seems that our local girls program is weak. When many of the Cub Scout baby sisters go camping with us, they are later disappointed to find the GS lacking in this area and many don’t stick.

I live in the South with tons of public activity areas and our families (scouting and non scouting) take advantage of them. So everyone expects scouting for boys and girls to be camping, hiking, exploring, and discovering outdoors instead of camping in cabins, doing more bookwork than necessary, and generally not providing as complete a hands-on experience as what the boys experience. By the time the girls are old enough for Venturing, many have other interests through school sports or simply have given up on the idea of outdoor scouting for girls. I think this may be the biggest reason why many girls want to be in Cub Scouts and the lower Boy Scout ranks. They simply want the outdoor experiences they’re not getting in GS until they are old enough to join Venture scouting. At least, in my area, I see that as the problem after discussing this very issue with several other families who feel the same way we do – we want our girls to experience the fun!

Here’s why.

As the “total available (male) youth” or TAY (which is how the BSA gauges how to best support the program at all levels) continues to decline — don’t confuse this with membership; this is the total number of available MALE YOUTH of Scouting age for each program — the BSA has to do one of three things.

The first plan which is being considered is reducing the “overhead” of youth and adults in a unit. Right now, a unit technically consists of five youth, three adults with a chartering partner organization; or a Lone Scout unit consisting of a single male and an adult of either gender. The Girl Scouts of the USA got it right — their Troops consist basically of six females and two adults, with no chartering partner organization (what we in the BSA would consider a patrol, den, squad). This first plan is to downsize the unit to basically what the GSUSA has and call *that* a BSA unit. The effect of this is to basically break up the larger BSA units — mainly medium sized Packs and large Troops — into three, four, six smaller Troops or Packs with reduced leadership. Before everyone gets bent — this works to the BSA’s advantage as many GSUSA leaders are aware — as the Pack or Troop gets larger, it provides the opportunity for those units to combine to become larger when the TAY numbers increase.

The second plan which is being considered is the opportunity for female youth of Cub Scout age to become Cub Scouts and WEBELOS Cub Scouts. This is being looked at because there are increasingly more females of Cub Scout/WEBELOS Cub Scout (elementary school age) than males out there. There are several issues with this — the biggest is that at this age level, the GSUSA is doing a great job attracting youth to their Daisy, Brownie and Junior programs and there’s going to be a lot of push-back on their parts if this option is rolled out. Another smaller issue is that of utilization of Girl Scouting day camps being used by the BSA — in many terrorities it can be a mess. Finally, there’s the entire “girls need girl guidance and boys needs male guidance” stuff which kept females from serving as adult leaders, commissioners and professionals other than within Exploring. I think that this could be overcome over time. Uniforms do not have to be changed; insignia do not have to be changed; and the term “Cub Scout” and “WEBELOS Cub Scout” could pertain to males or females (”We’ll BE LOyal Scouts” can refer to either the BSA’s or GSUSA Scout programs)!

The third option seriously being considered is simply to continue the way we’re going and watch as many local Councils implode upon themselves simply because the male youth is no longer there in larger numbers as before. This means that we’ll see many local Councils become larger and larger and the number of professional and volunteer support will drop significantly. The effect that this has is that overall the BSA’s membership will drop to a point back similar to the middle 60s and we’ll be looking at our older youth programs as well as “variations” on our Cub Scout programming to try to pull us out.

Like I said, these are PAPER studies…as far as I’m aware, we don’t have female Cub Scouts *yet* but I won’t be surprised that in March or April of the year after next (we’ll have to get through the 100th anniversary first!) that we’ll see female youth in *some local Councils (class 1 Quality Councils) * working through a Nationally-coordinated plan to work through the effects of having female youth in Cub Scouting.

The BSA and GSUSA went down this road once before…in the early 70s. The two programs were working toward some sort of consolidation for a lot of reasons. It fell apart when the GSUSA refused to accept the BSA’s “chartering partnership” concept and when the BSA refused to drop the number of professionals to a core of three (Scout Executive, Assistant Scout Executive and Program Director) instead of the four or so professionals predominate in the smallest class Councils (Scout Executive, two District Executives and a Field Director or Senior District Executive).

I know that the BSA, the GSUSA, and Campfire are looking at ways to get past the “total available youth” situation. In the meantime, my personal advice to those who don’t want “girls in our BOY SCOUTING programs”, is to “make more male babies and sign them up for Cub Scouting when they are born….” *smiling*

The numbers are simply not there right now otherwise.

Settummanque!