A useful counterpart to this story is some of the big sporting news coming out of the Middle East: Girls in private schools in Saudi Arabia are now allowed to play sports. This comes on the heels of last summer’s decision to allow a woman to represent Saudi Arabia in the Olympics. So when we think about the inequality between male and female athletes in the US, it’s amazing to think how different this gap really is in other parts of the world., not just historically but also in the present.

And in the US, progress is happening all the time. Now stories appear not just about a single girl playing on a boys’ team, but multiple girls playing with boys. One example is this article about high school baseball players Samantha Yarnall and Taylor Jones. I saw this link by following Justine Siegal, written about in my first Shrinking and Pinking entry, and while she is waiting for the day when this isn’t newsworthy, I’m waiting for the day when: 1) A team is considered co-ed whenever boys and girls play together, not only when a boy plays on a girls’ team, and 2) when there is enough interest to have single-sex teams in almost all sports.

In the meantime, congrats to Yarnall and Jones and both making the starting line-up and here’s hoping they might make the cover of Sports Illustrated sometime.

Before detailing those though, some thoughts on making all this work as a mom: On the day I did the two TV appearances described below, which bookend-ed my work day, I thought I had *finally* figured out how to be a mom, work, be a friend, etc. I did NECN early, dropped off breakfast for a close friend with a new baby where we talked about the “usual” postpartum issues, ran to exercise, and raced home to put Carston down for his nap since I didn’t get to do our usual morning routine earlier. During the day I managed to get our garage door repaired and give Carston some extra Mommy kisses while preparing for Greater Boston. After the WGBH appearance I again raced home, and Carston and I headed off to dinner with a friend at the local mall. As I drove there I remember thinking to myself, “What a day! After 15 months this is really clicking!” My  husband was out of town for work and I felt like this was proof I could make all this work. Famous last words, right?! Well, Carston and his friend (who is almost 3) had a great time at P.F.Chang’s. They were so cute together mimicking one another– one would laugh, and vice versa, one would babble something and so would the other. The “problem” with this is that Carston is very into screeching. Can’t figure out why this is, or whether or not this means he will be an opera singer, but no matter what we have tried to do, he still screeches like a little screech owl. Of course then, his friend screeched back. While most of the people around us were very understanding, one man in particular, sitting behind me, kept telling me how wrong I was to bring my son out and that this wasn’t Chuck E. Cheese. I chose not to engage with him, but I did feel his comments were way out of line given that P.F. Chang’s has a children’s menu and the Natick Mall is one of the most baby/family-friendly places I have ever seen. I could have let this man put a damper on my day, and he did a bit (so much so that I am writing this), but other people around us were so nice, and as my friend pointed out there are SO many more good people in the world than bad. I ended the day by eating my carryout P.F. Chang’s Lo Mein (couldn’t eat while dealing with this man and my little screech owl), watching my WGBH appearance, and waking up around 1 am when John got home. All in all though, I still hope we are *finally* figuring all this out, despite people telling me where I should or shouldn’t take my Little Man…

Two pieces I wrote related to competition appeared this week. The first is “Competitions Within Competitions: America’s insatiable hunger,” which is part of my ongoing blog at Psychology Today about children, competition, and popular culture. The piece specifically talks about the rise of even more competition in reality TV shows, where celebrities have teams that compete for the glory of the win on behalf of the team leader as well.

The other piece is about a young man who took competition too far, punching youth soccer coach Ricardo Portillo in the head during a game in Utah. Portillo died from his injuries a week later– a sad incident that should prompt legal changes to protect sports officials and reflection about what increasing competition is doing to youth. This article, “Youth Soccer Shouldn’t Be A Blood Sport” is on WBUR’s Cognoscenti blog, a site where I have long desired to see my words appear (and that I got the YES on my birthday was a nice treat).

I’ve also done both TV and radio recently, talking about competition. In a radio appearance on The Larry Fedoruk Show on NewsTalk 610 out of Canada, I spoke about links between bullying and competition. You can hear that by clicking HERE.

Speaking again and bullying, and links to violence and social media, I appeared on WGBH’s Greater Boston with Emily Rooney for a very interesting discussion about boys, terrorism, and violence. It was triggered by the arrest of an 18-year-old high school student, Cameron D’Ambrosio, in the Boston area for making terrorist threats on Facebook, but the discussion went much deeper into youth culture today.

Finally, another discussion about youth culture and competition took place at NECN’s The Morning Show about how college graduates can navigate the increasingly competitive labor market after graduation.

This time of year is filed with competitive experiences- both victories and fall-out from losses- and I look forward to thinking, writing, and discussing more about these topics. Thanks for reading and listening/watching!

Sports loves to focus on the “youngest-ever” and “first-ever” monikers, which makes sense given most athletic endeavors rely on statistics, records, and history to fill the space around the action. CNN put together this slideshow, based on Tianlang’s success, which highlights our tendency to spotlight the youngest even if they aren’t always the best (yet).

Chess, considered by many to be the most difficult mental sport, also loves its numbers, rankings, and history. Last month nine-year-old Awonder Liang broke yet another record, becoming the youngest ever chess master in American history. This was his third significant record, as at only 8 the Wisconsin boy was the youngest to defeat an International Master in a standard tournament game, and at 9 he defeated a Grand Master.

Funny to think about this young, sweet face destroying opponents over the chess board, right?

Another sweet face that doesn’t betray the skill level of the child is that of seven-year-old Apoorva Mali. Apoorva’s has been growing her fanbase worldwide after a recording of her performing a magic show in India last year (when she was only 6!) went viral.

Like many prodigies she was exposed to her activity early (in this case her parents are both magicians), but she clearly has a knack, even if she isn’t Houdini quite yet.

Another girl with a special knack for her hobby is Sylvia Todd. Todd is the oldest Pint-Sized Phenom in this edition, but at 11 she’s not even yet a teenager. Last week Todd participated in the White House’s Science Fair where she had a robot paint an Obama doodle for him (it said, “Go STEM”).

Todd is more well known for her YouTube science show, “Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show;” her 19 episodes have been seen by over 1.5 million already.  In her recent New York Times profile she is quoted as saying, “Ever since I was really young I liked destroying stuff. I’ve always been interested in making and doing things hands-on.”

I suspect on some level all of these pint-sized phenoms enjoy “destroying” an opponent, an object, expectations– or those records. And, in the process, they are really creating.

These four different pieces give you a sense of different outlets for competition, especially in childhood– including the athletic field, the classroom, the stage, and the television screen.

1) “Qualities of the B (aka Bench-Warming) Player” at PsychologyToday.com- I am very excited that I now have a monthly blog, Playing to Win, at Psychology Today where I will write about the intersections of competition and childhood in America. Stay tuned for topics like the National Spelling Bee and measuring ambition.

2) “It’s College Admissions Decision Time: Are Parents Prepared” at The Huffington Post- It’s always interesting to see who you reach when you write at The Huffington Post (and also talking- I’ve done a few recent video sessions with HuffPost Live as well, like these on the sociological impacts of sperm having an expiration date and how to talk with children about tragedy). This article explores how and why parents should try to raise resilient kids in a competitive world long before they get to high school and deal with college rejection.

3) Oxford Bibliographies entries on Child Beauty Pageants and After-school Hours and Activities in the Childhood Studies volume- I was honored to be recognized as the leading social scientist in these two areas and to write the entry for them. While they both include some of my work (obviously!), they also suggest other areas to explore including books, articles, television shows, and documentaries to help you learn more about these often misunderstood areas of children’s lives.

4) “Why ‘Bet on Your Baby’ is Bad for the Babies”  at Kveller- So happy to be back at Kveller writing about some of my favorite topics all in the same piece: reality television, social science, baby experiments, and my son. Watching so much TV not only gets me writing, but also talking, like in this recent article at Fox News about Teen Mom star Farrah Abraham (and another pop culture piece about Beyonce).

Hope you enjoy these pieces and stay tuned for more talk about competition and kids in the coming months!

This year three much talked about op-eds were published within a day of one another. First there was the New York Times piece by Claire Vaye Watkins, “The Ivy League was Another Planet.” Then the next day brought Suzy Lee Weiss’ “To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me: If only I had a tiger mom or started a fake charity)” and Susan Patton’s letter in The Daily Princetonian, “Advice for the young women of Princeton: the daughters I never had.” The Weiss and Patton pieces have been extremely polarizing (if you haven’t read them, click through and you’ll immediately see why). The Watkins piece has a much more measured, even sociological bent to it, making a connection between information (and lack thereof) about the Ivy League to an abundance of information about the military option in poor American communities.

I haven’t seen anyone connect these three pieces, but to me they all address what sociologists call cultural capital. Weiss and Patton– who I kind of see as same sides of a generational coin– know that attending an Ivy brings you a particular type of cultural capital; it’s why Weiss wanted to attend one and why Patton says Ivy Leaguers should practice assortative mating (a college classmate, Ross Douthat [who incidentally also married a fellow '02er like I did] wrote about this exceptionally well in the the Times). Now both women seem uncomfortably and unlikelably elitist (Patton claims her ex-husband went to a no-name college and in an interesting Today Show appearance Weiss seems to put down Penn State) but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a kernel of truth in what they are saying. Watkins’ piece is evidence of that. Attending an Ivy means knowing enough to get there, and getting access to lots of other information once you are “in.”

Of course, that’s not always without complications: It can also mean a permanent inferiority complex. This is spoken by an outsider who has since managed to become an insider, albeit while trying to retain an outsider’s perspective. I actually write about this at the beginning of my forthcoming book, Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture, as so much of the focus of many parents I met is how their elementary school-age kids will get to an elite college someday (oh, have I mentioned you can now pre-order it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the University of California Press’ website?!).

Watkins, a published author and professor, doesn’t seem caught up in an inferiority complex. Weiss’ self-deprecating humor may yet give her an out and she can enjoy her infamy. I suppose there’s still hope for them that they can marry Patton’s youngest son, since in Patton’s world Princeton men can marry “down”… Although I’m guessing both young women have other foci and aren’t just focused on getting married to an Ivy Leaguer. And if they are, I suppose there’s always graduate school.

Step forward: Mark Cuban announces he would give Brittney Griner a shot to try out for the NBA, and is considering drafting her in the second round. It appears a woman trying out for a NBA team hasn’t happened since 1979.

Step forward: Lauren Silberman, a college soccer player, became the first woman ever to participate in an NFL Regional Scouting Combine. She tried out as a kicker (apparently you pay to compete at these events, but there are a limited number of slots).

Step back: Silberman did not perform well– at all. Neither of her two kicks went beyond 20 yards. Some even suggested this was designed to torpedo women trying out for the NFL in the future.

Step forward: Danielle Coughlin became the first female to win a state wrestling title in Massachusetts. She won in the 106-pound final in Division 2. She also served as a captain of her high school’s co-ed team. I really enjoyed this quote from the article about what her victory meant to her: “After I won, a guy in the stands actually turned to me and he said, ‘Smile, I have to send a picture to my daughter in Africa and tell her that in this country women can become anything.’ I actually started crying when he said that.”

Step forward: Caroline Pia, whose family had taken their fight to the media to ensure that their twelve-year-old daughter would be able to play on her Catholic League’s football team, was given the go-ahead to play in the League.

Step back: Thirteen-year-old Ella Wood in California is the reason why her team– which won every game in their season– actually “lost.” The Foothill Sports League decided ex post that having a girl play meant a game was forfeited. To their credit, all of Ella’s male teammates said they should forfeit. But as of now she won’t be able to play with her teammates next year.

But let’s end on a more positive note! Former Olympic swimmer Donna de Varona, who helped establish the Women’s Sports Foundation and served as its president, is now helping female athletes do even more trailblazing. She recently announced a partnership with Ernst & Young to help female athletes transition to leadership roles in their careers outside of sport.

I found this statistic especially interesting: About 4800 women took part in last year’s London Games and less than 30% will return to compete in Rio. While it’s somewhat discouraging that this is necessary, overall it will be a huge step forward.

To more steps forward!

At my son Carston’s bris I proudly announced that he had already completed his first mitzvah—or at least I hoped he had.

Shortly after he came into this world, Carston gave up some blood—cord blood. He didn’t really have to do anything, but hopefully his donation will help save a life (and we know that to save one life is to save the entire world).

Any expectant mom who reads a baby magazine or signs up for a newborn-related email list has seen the ads for cord-blood banking. For parents with large personal fortunes, private cord-blood banking can seem like good protection against possible misfortune. Given some family’s medical history, private cord-blood banking might even be important. But for most of us, a better investment in our children’s futures is to take the thousands of dollars required for private cord-blood banking and open a college savings account instead.

My husband and I decided against privately banking our son’s cord blood, but I couldn’t stop thinking about cord blood.

For several years, my husband and I have been members of the National Marrow Donor Program. My husband has been matched not once, but twice, to someone in need of a bone-marrow transplant. It’s rare to be matched even once, so I joke that he has “super bone marrow” (though he’s never been called on to actually donate). I thought my son might have some of his dad’s super bone marrow and hoped he could perhaps help someone in need. So my husband and I decided to donate Carston’s cord blood to a public bank.

Because the hospital where I delivered did not collect cord blood, I reached out to the Carolinas Cord Blood Bank, one of four public cord-blood banks. They sent me a kit: a box that I brought with me to the hospital when I went into labor. A family member FedExed everything back to the blood bank the day Carston was born, and two days later we went home, minus the box, but with our bundle of joy.

We’ll never know if Carston’s cord blood helped someone, though of course I hope it has—or will someday. But to me, part of the importance of the act is in not knowing the specific impact. Hopefully my son’s cord-blood donation is but the first mitzvah in the life of a little mensch.

I also want to add that I found it pretty egregious that Sandberg didn’t discuss Larry Summers’ 2005 remarks on women and science. I understand that he is her mentor, but it just screamed out to be addressed. I suppose it’s yet another example of why women need to lean in, but I would have appreciated hearing her perspective on the incident (more than knowing that the incident with her children and lice occurred on a private jet as opposed to commercial aircraft– since the private part didn’t really matter for her overall point).

Most of my other thoughts (besides my own personal anecdotes and experiences) have been addressed by others far more eloquent than yours truly. But I’d love to hear what you think, so feel free to leave me a comment here or on Facebook/Twitter!

When people find out I’m the product of eight years of all-girls’ schooling they often ask what the best part of the experience was. I usually answer, only half-joking, “I rarely had to shave my legs.”

Lately I’ve been thinking more seriously about my single-sex education after devouring Sheryl Sandberg’s now infamous Lean In. One of Sandberg’s bigger points is that a lot of work needs to be done long before women are in careers, graduate school, or even college, in order to teach them how to lean in. Given this focus on childhood and adolescence I’m surprised that all-girls’ schools haven’t been discussed in the same breath as Sandberg’s long-term project. Based on my experience, and my research on competition, gender, and education, promoting all-girls’ education in the grade school years is a useful strategy to raise women who know how to lean in throughout life.

In Lean In Sandberg explains that as a child she used to organize all the neighborhood children and tell them what to do. But to this day she cringes when her siblings tell this story because: “When a girl tries to lead, she is often labeled bossy. Boys are seldom called bossy because a boy taking the role of a boss does not surprise or offend.”

My professional, adult self certainly understands this sentiment, but my 13-year-old self would have been confused. At 13 I would have said that of course girls need to be bossy — who else would lead? I always thought of girls as the sports stars and the valedictorians, because at my school they were.

I took this attitude with me into high school, a building that sat next to an all-boys’ school. Some of my classes were coed. The boys came over for European history and drama, classes where I always positioned myself in the front row, preferring the “visiting” boys sit behind me. To my teenage self they were clearly infringing on my territory and I made sure I outperformed them. That confidence translated when I went next door for Latin, where I righteously covered my tests with my arm to make sure the boy sitting behind me couldn’t cheat off of me (a trick he only got away with once).

When I arrived at Harvard (also Sandberg’s alma mater) I was never afraid to raise my hand in a seminar, and I quickly learned that the best way to be heard meant jumping into the discussion and not waiting to be recognized. I credit my earlier classroom experiences for my chutzpah.

But being a social scientist I can’t help but look to the literature (incidentally, the well-researched footnotes are one of Lean In‘s strongest features, and worth a read), and that’s when the picture becomes more complicated. A 2009 study by professors at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies presented data that graduates of all-girls’ schools show stronger academic orientations, especially in math and computer skills, and higher standardized tests scores, than their coed counterparts. Other studies have acknowledged that all-girls’ education doesn’t necessarily improve academic performance, but they haven’t found that it hurts either. A well-publicized 2011 Science paper disagreed, proclaiming that single-sex education can have a long-term negative effect by promoting gender stereotypes.

CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING ON THE HUFFINGTON POST BOOKS!

Short of being able to do twin experiments (where one identical twin goes to a coed school and the other goes to a single-sex school), we may never know the precise effect of what learning in a single-sex environment does for girls. But we can know how people assess their experiences — like me and my former classmates.

Thanks in part to Sandberg and her Facebook team, I know that many of the girls I attended middle and high school with have made a variety of different choices as women: some are married, many have children, and some are stay-at-home moms while others are doctors or lawyers (one even premiered at the Metropolitan Opera this month, while still nursing her five-month-old son). We all learned as young women the hard-to-measure notion that females can be leaders in any area just by looking around us at our peers. This knowledge and the confidence that comes with it can’t be discounted.

And while we’re at it, ladies, it’s also worth remembering that shaving your legs every day isn’t a necessity — and not doing so leaves more time for all kinds of leaning in.

Sixteen-year-old Arielle Gold recently won a bronze in snowboarding at the X Games.

Seventeen-year-old Gracie Gold came in sixth at the 2013 World Figure Skating Championships. But both will be aiming for gold at the 2014 Sochi Olymics.

They won’t be the only teenage stars gunning for gold in Sochi: seventeen-year-old Mikaela Shiffrin (who I’ve written about before) solidified her position as gold medal-favorite in Sochi when she won the world slalom title last month. [Another fun Pint-Sized Phenom update this month is that Caine Monroy, the nine-year-old cardboard arcade entrepreneur, inked a deal with William Morris!]

While fourteen-year-old racer Kaz Grala won’t be able to compete in the Olympics, he is revving his engine for NASCAR, even though he is still quite young. Only an eighth grader he’s expecting to go pro soon.

And because we don’t want to forget non-athlete pint-sized phenoms, check out first grader Zora Ball. At seven, Zora is the youngest person to create “a full version of a mobile application video game.” Perhaps Zora will challenge sixteen-year-old Lauren Marbe, who was just announced as having one of the highest IQs in the world.

Even without “Gold” in their names, it’s clear that these pint-sized phenoms have golden futures. It’s always amazing to keep track of such impressive kids in a variety of activities… Even if it is humbling!

Lil Poopy, aka Luie Rivera Jr., is a 9-year-old resident of Brockton, Mass. The fourth grader, who earned his stage name due to some impressive diapers when he was a baby, is now an artist with Cocaine City Records. He raps about doing drugs and having sex with women. His videos show simulated sex acts for money, and he’s paid thousands to appear in nightclubs and perform. Not surprisingly, the boy’s father, Luie Rivera Sr., is being investigated for child abuse by the Department of Children and Families at the request of the Brockton Police Department.

“Lil Poopy” took to his Twitter page to rage against the investigation writing, “LOOK AT SANDY HOOK Y THEY OUT HERE HURTING CHILDREN IM JUST SINGING HOOKS IANT OUT HERE HURTING CHILDREN.”

Some may wonder why Lil Poopy’s father is investigated when no child protection agency (that we know of) has investigated the mothers who appear on Lifetime’s Dance Moms. Every week the show features girls around Lil Poopy’s age crying because of nasty comments made by a teacher who puts them in revealing costumes and choreographs often age-inappropriate dance routines for them (one memorable one involved them portraying “topless” Vegas showgirls). Similarly, child beauty pageant moms — especially those featured on TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras — are frequently accused of abusing their kids. One mom, who dressed her four-year-old daughter in a Dolly Parton outfit complete with fake breasts almost lost custody of her daughter to her formerly incarcerated ex-husband as a direct result of her daughter’s pageant participation, as I discussed last year at Slate, though the two parents now share custody.

The difference between these stage moms and Lil Poopy’s father is that while many of the moms clearly have questionable parenting habits (which very likely could do emotional harm that will haunt their daughters later in life) they are not doing anything illegal with their kids. Meanwhile, Lil Poopy is promoting activities that are not only illegal for kids, and but also for adults. One of his lyrics, “Coke ain’t a bad word,” speaks for itself.

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A lawyer for the Riveras has suggested that this investigation is racist. The Riveras are originally from Puerto Rico and there are obvious racial undertones when Luie Jr. is criticized for rapping, an art form traditionally associated with African Americans.

But if we’re going to think in terms of social categories the sociologist in me finds it more interesting that the first time a child’s out-of-school activity has led to such a public criminal investigation is when it happens to a boy. Do we care more when a male is the subject of exploitation? For example, viewers have been particularly outraged that Lil Poopy’s shirt is lifted up by an older woman who grinds up against him while dancing. But this type of thing happens all the time with young female performers.

It’s possible to imagine a defense of Luie Sr. that says that child actors play roles that feature illegal activity all the time, and their parents aren’t accused of abuse because of it. But the key difference here is that child actors are portraying a character and not themselves. Lil Poopy may be an alter ego of Luie Jr.’s, in the same way that Beyoncé invokes Sasha Fierce, but his Twitter feed and YouTube account exist in his name. (That it’s actually against the rules for a 9-year-old to have his own Twitter account goes without saying, though it’s not formally illegal.) This has also been an issue for children involved in reality television, who “play” themselves and not a character. As I have written about at USA Today, kids in reality TV are largely unprotected when it comes to work conditions and finances but, again, they usually are not promoting illegal activity.

So are the Riveras doing something that will mean Lil Poopy is removed from their home? Hopefully not, but we won’t know for sure until the investigation concludes. Should this situation worry us? Absolutely. Lil Poopy is just the latest example of kids growing up too fast, trying to be famous, and creating online personas through social media to create a public personality that now needs to be over the top to get attention.

If the goal was to get attention for Lil Poopy, it obviously worked, though it may come at a severe cost to his family and future. Words you may never have thought before: Perhaps Honey Boo Boo’s mother, June Shannon, can give some parenting lessons…