Sept. 17, 2004 -- Girls tend to lose interest in extracurricular activities,
Sept. 17, 2004 -- Girls tend to lose interest in extracurricular activities, such as sports and music, about the time they reach puberty, but this is not so true when dads take an active interest, new research shows.
In one of the first studies to examine participation by girls in stereotypically male- and female-associated activities, researchers reported that moms tend to get young girls started in such activities, while dads play a bigger role in keeping their older daughters involved.
It is widely believed that a strong interest in activities such as sports, art, or music not only influences learning in general, but help shape future identity. In an effort to better understand the influences that determine how girls spend their free time, a group of developmental researchers tracked 290 white girls from working- and middle-class families over a two-year period.
The researchers examined the attitudes of the girls, who ranged in age from 8 to 15, and their parents regarding typically masculine activities such as playing sports, and pursuits considered more feminine, such as art, music, and dance.
"We wanted to identify the characteristics among the families and the individual girls that kept them involved in these activities as they got older," Susan McHale, PhD, tells WebMD. "We wondered why some girls continued to be involved in activities considered to be more masculine, and whether they felt pressure to stop."
Like Fathers and Sons
The researchers found that the girls' participation in sports and other activities typically considered masculine increased in early adolescence until about age 13, and then declined steadily thereafter. Interest in activities considered more feminine was highest at age 9.
The influence of dads on participation in both masculine and feminine activities tended to be more pronounced among adolescent girls than among young ones.
Just as fathers and sons tend to stay close through sports and other active pursuits, rather than through talking, McHale says the same seems to be true of fathers and daughters.
"Our sense is that activities are a way that fathers and daughters can stay connected," she says. "Fathers who make their enthusiasms known to their daughters can have an influence on their development in that way, even if they don't do a lot of talking."
Hormones Not to Blame
The researchers took saliva samples from the girls in the study to measure levels of the male hormone testosterone, but they found little relationship between participation in masculine activities and testosterone levels.
Their overall findings did support the hypothesis that girls feel pressure to stop playing sports and doing other typically male activities around the time they hit puberty, but the source of this pressure remains unclear.
"From age 8 to 12 interest grows, but around middle school girls start dropping out of sports," McHale says. "One explanation for this is that there is less opportunity because there are fewer organized sports for girls of this age, but one of the reasons for the lack of community activities for adolescent girls is lack of interest."
Human development professor Allan L. Wigfield, PhD, says it is not entirely clear why so many girls abandon extracurricular activities as they get older, just as it is not totally clear why boys drop out of school at higher rates than girls around this time.
"Even without the constraints that were common in the past there is still a fairly sex-stereotypical pattern among girls regarding participation in activities," Wigfield tells WebMD. "They must either still be getting strong messages from some place about this or there are other things going on in their world that lead them to abandon these activities."
