We have to be strong for young boys.

We only have between four or five boys. So it's tough filling some of the events. We do have 14,15 girls, so that gives us the advantage of putting a strong swimmer in each event.

All of a sudden she's gone ... in minutes. In minutes they've lost a daughter, lost a child.

the nation's young men have
been proved by surveys to be completely unmarriageable, and as a result there's a whole
generation of single girls like me with their own incomes and homes who have lots of fun and
don't need to wash anyone else's socks.

With boys there was a fundamental assumption that they had a right to be there—not always, but more often than not. With girls, Why her? came up so quickly.

Small boys were a mystery to Sylvie. The satisfaction they gained from throwing sticks or stones for hours on end, the obsessive collection of inanimate objects, the brutal destruction of the fragile world around them, all seemed at odds with the men they were supposed to become.