Parents' Dilemma: Finding a Summer Camp Free of Gender Stereotyping

[SoDesuKa]

This is the week when many sleepaway camps welcome children for the first session of camp. Some camps advertise themselves as promoting "traditional values" which sounds like it means gender stereotyping. Indeed some boys' camps emphasize the rough and tumble experience that boys are said to prefer. I'm not sure the Princess Camps are still around, the ones that emphasized arts and crafts for girls.

Camp websites sometimes convey a mixed message about where they stand on gender issues. In one website, for example, the voiceover talks blandly about the emphasis on teamwork but the video shows little boys being scolded by the coaches to run run run! I'm glad I'm not nine years old and caught in the middle of a struggle over what it means to be a real boy. And I would not want to send my daughter off someplace back in the 1950's.

[Rhiannon12866]

1. I went to a very cool camp when I was a kid.

It was a girls' camp on Lake Champlain in Vermont that emphasized riding and swimming, but had all kinds of other activities, from every water sport to theater, arts and crafts, gymnastics and dance, to archery, campcraft (hiking, mountain climbing and camping out) and riflery. I went there for six summers and loved it, made some of the best friends of my life there, as well as learning a great deal, including personal responsibility. It had been around since 1919, and the couple who ran it when I was there had bought it in 1952. One of their daughters was and still is one of my best friends. It's also just a beautiful setting, three tiers, the lowest one the shore of the lake. Unfortunately, they decided to retire about five years ago and sold it to a corporation. The generations of alumnae, who still hold reunions, are not happy at all, but it's done and at least we're still allowed to visit, but it's not the same. :(

[LibertyLover]

7. Was it Camp Kiniya by any chance?

I only went to camp (Camp Kiniya) one summer, but enjoyed it very much.

[Rhiannon12866]

14. It sure was! LOL.

I actually went to a reunion there last summer, organized by M'Lou, and it was really great to be back, but a lot of us, particularly the older ladies, were disheartened by the changes. I hadn't been there since 1994, for their 75th. For me, it felt like going home... :hi:

[LibertyLover]

19. Well, hello fellow camper -

I have not gone back since I was there as a camper. But I did attend a reunion a year or so later at the Horse Show in New York at Madison Square Garden. It was great fun seeing people that I had known. I have fond memories of Kiniya. :toast:

[Rhiannon12866]

24. That is so cool! Imagine that!

I suppose it's too much to expect that we would have crossed paths, but we must have had many of the same experiences. I got sent there for the riding, but stuck around for the theater and the rifle range, LOL. I was a JC in both. I also went on the Irish trip. And I went to the horse show at the Garden several times! My cousin was in it and we used to root for her... Don't know if you remember M'Lou, but she was one of my best friends and her parents owned the camp. She also had a younger sister and an older one who were there, too, Sharon and Annie, and you must remember her parents. They sold the camp in 2006, pretty depressing, but they still live right where they did and both of them were there last summer. I have fond memories of Kiniya, too... When I've been back, it's like I never left. :hi: :pals:

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Camp Quest is gender neutral and God neutral.

Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States aimed at the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural world view.

The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government.

-more-

http://www.campquest.org/mission

[bluestateguy]

3. Some parents rather like the gender stereotyping

In any case, it should be the parents choice. We can certainly expect summer camps to reflect the blue state-red state cultural divide.

[SoDesuKa]

9. So Much Work Being a Kid These Days

One video I saw seems to offer boys remedial training in what might be called boy skills. For instance, when I was a kid I wasn't good at sports but I don't remember feeling pressure. I just got used to being picked next to last on teams, that's all. This particular camp puts on a hard sell about improving sports skills, but it looks more general than that.

Parents, we won't let your kid mope. We'll shame him into developing a teamwork ethic.

Gawd.

[SoCalDem]

12. The camps our son went to were soccer camps

I think those boys were always too hurt & tired to raise much hell :evilgrin:

[FLPanhandle]

4. My daughters have been the one to choose their summer activities

They have chosen to participate in the Duke TIP program a couple of summers, the People to People camp, & Space camp. In addition, they usually attend a running camp each year in North Carolina. These are all educational or athletic camps so not much gender stereotyping is possible.

For the exception, my youngest leaves tomorrow for Cheerleader Camp. The outfits and packing are enough to make me roll my eyes.

[rucky]

5. I know, I know. My daughter just started Fashion Camp

But she digs it & it's a good creative outlet.

Next week is Inventor Camp, and she's equally excited about that one.

[SoDesuKa]

11. Beverly Hills Troop

She doesn't have any wilderness skills, but she knows how to survive.

Her recommendations for a campsite were totally unsuitable. There were no outlets. And there was dirt, and bugs, and...
and it rains there. So anyway, we've found a place that's much more us: the Beverly Hills Hotel.



I may be a beginner at some things, but I've got a black belt in shopping!

[kickysnana]

6. If this camp is based on acceptance of people as they are rather than one ideology of

the adults for their idea of utopia then this is good. If it is teaching just another artificial set of behaviors it is just as confusing and harmful for the kids and society as was the original 50's version of gender building.

Spoken as a female heterosexual who found out as an adult that I fall smack dab in the middle of male/female in the way my brain functions which explained a lot and made me an outre growing up and sometimes even now.

[SoDesuKa]

16. Ideology

Despite our efforts to create a society in which gender isn't so all-important, children are still bombarded with messages of what boys are and what girls are. Summer camps reinforce these messages, no surprise there.

It's generally accepted that being out in the woods is closer to nature. But "nature" has two meanings here - the great outdoors with dirt and bugs, etc., and human nature. If being out in the wilderness is said to make boys more masculine and girls more feminine, that takes the meaning of "nature" from one context and uses it - dishonestly - in another.

Conscientious parents who teach their children correct values may see their efforts undermined by camps that promote so-called "traditional" values. The traditions here aren't time-honored, they're just old-fashioned sexism.

[PassingFair]

8. Campfire Kids

A tremendous organization!

http://www.campfireusa.org/

[Amaril]

10. I went to Girl Scout camp as a kid back in the 70's

Camp Birdsall Edey in PA. It was girl's only (obviously) and it was awesome -- hiking, archery, horseback riding -- lots of nature walks (with guidebooks for local plants, birds, etc) -- learned how to build a fire, "camp" cook, dig a latrine, pitch a tent. We did crafty stuff too -- leather work, batiking, macramae -- had sing-a-long's and talent shows. Ah, memories. :)

Just did a little googling..........have you checked this site? http://www.campresource.com/

[SoCalDem]

13. Accck.. you brought on a "flashback"

I was a girl scout when we lived in Panama. One "camp-out" involved time at the Survival School run by the military.. We had to eat a rhinoceros beetle & drink water from plants (after we scooped out the bugs)..:puke:

It also resulted in many of us having to have our hair mostly shaved off from swimming in some godforsaken swamp.. We had buzzcuts long before Sinead O'Connor came onto the scene.. ...My mother saved my waist-length golden hair:( Neither of us were fans of the purple goop she had to rub on my head .. :)

That experience traumatized a LOT of us....but we did learn how to live in the jungle ...a little bit:)

and the leeches.. did I mention the leeches? We had to pull them off of our legs.. They were the size of a pea-pod...and slimy:(

[Amaril]

17. OMG!

That wasn't camp............that was torture! :wow:

Never had an experience like that.........though my troop leader did take us "swamp tromping" through the Everglades. At the time we thought it was "lame" ('cause we were teenagers, and EVERYthing was lame). Looking back on it as an adult gives me a "what the Hell were my parents thinking" moment. Fifteen girls........ranging in age from 12 to 17.......two diminuitive troop leaders (both were maybe 5 feet tall) and a guy with a stick (to check for gator holes) sloshing through muck & water up to our chests. I remember having to do a "leech & tick check" of each other once we were done.

BUT, that being said, I'm grateful for the experience. Being in Scouts gave me a window on the world I wouldn't have otherwise had (only child of older parents raised in rural northwestern PA in the 70's), and played a big part in shaping the woman I eventually grew into being.

[AngryAmish]

15. At what age do you send a kid to camp?

[SoCalDem]

18. I have seen flyers for "day-camp" for quite small kids

I suspect that most of the sleep away camps have ages from about 10 & up.. By then a kid is less likely to be afraid to be away from home:)

Sometimes camps are a word-of-mouth thing.. one kid tells a friend about their camp & that kid starts working on his/her parents to get to go :evilgrin:

2 of our kids were not a BIT interested in doing anything in the summer but loafing.. the other one always went to soccer camp.. usually in places like San Luis Obispo (nice beaches:evilgrin: ) or some nearby college campus:)

[BlueIris]

20. Why would anyone send a child to "sleepaway camp"?

A den of danger, child abuse and pedophilia, far away from parents' "prying eyes."

[Scout]

21. i would say none of those are the experience of the vast majority of campers n/t

[FLPanhandle]

23. Those are only the religious summer camps. nt

[lumberjack_jeff]

22. Scolding?

Hopefully they can one day afford the therapist to help them through that terrible event from their childhoods.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

25. I went to music camp -- no outdoorsy stuff, and no bugs!

These were at major universities (like KU in Lawrence - home of the Jayhawks).

Choir, band and orchestra practice all day, living in a dorm like a college student.
Performing two concerts at the end of the week on Sunday - one orchestra, one choir concert was what I was in.

Did that for five weeks, with a different conductor (two different conductors with orch and choir) every week. That was ten concerts. I thought it was fun, I didn't know any better!

On the last day, I had to perform in TWO concerts, one after the other.
This is after the usual one week of rehearsal.

First, we stood up for an hour and sang the Mozart Requiem.

Secondly, I sat down and was in the first violin section of the orchestra playing Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss. Pretty difficult for a high school kid, but we survived.
The introduction of that piece is the fanfare with organ made famous in the movie 2001. And beaten to death for years afterward in advertisements.