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The Impact Of Sports On Female Adolescent Development: The Importance Of Title Ix, Dana C. Jack

Dana C. Jack

Adolescence is a time of crisis for girls, a time when girls become psychologically vulnerable. While boys are at risk in childhood, girls undergo a sudden drop in resiliency at age 11 (Block, 1990). Not only girls with family problems, but a wide range of lively, outspoken, and intelligent girls face marked increases in depression, poor body images, eating disorders, and a fall in self-esteem significantly more often than do boys. Seligman (1991) finds that “girls, at least up to puberty, are more noticeably optimistic than boys, (p.125) and concludes that “whatever causes the huge difference in depression in adulthood, …