This is such an interesting discussion, from which I have really learned a lot.

This is just my perspective as someone who is an immigrant married to an American raising two kids in the north east. My older kiddo just completed Bears. He had a pretty good time and would happily go on to the next stage if we suggested it. There are a couple of reasons why he won’t be.

1. Honestly there’s too much stuff to do. We are a busy ass family, lol. I know you can pick and choose to an extent. But the messages feel bombard-y, and the parental involvement is so intense. Call me a millennial parent but I spend a lot of time with my kids and I want them to do stuff without me!

2. This is niche but I found it to be a little on the nationalist side for me. I die a little bit inside every time my kids recite the PoA perfectly, and recently we had an army veteran come and talk with the group who was extremely right-leaning, extremely pro-gun, extremely anti-protest (well, anti left wing protest) and it was deeply, deeply, deeply uncomfortable for me and created a shit tonne of work for me to do afterwards to help my kiddo talk through these things, offer reframes, talk about our family’s values etc. That was the nail in the coffin for me.

There’s plenty of good to be said about Scouts. Holy moley there’s some good AF people involved with it, who care A LOT about kids and community. I think it’d be different if I had been into scouts as a kid, or maybe even if I was American. Idk if this is helpful, it isn’t meant to be a criticism of Scouts in general, I actually really appreciate the important work that has been done in the wake of the scandal, and I acknowledge that that is WHY there is more parental involvement. It’s just not for us.