Emily Albertson, 23, spent much of her childhood surrounded by boys obsessed with sports.

She has two brothers, and out of 15 cousins, she was the only girl. It's no surprise that she grew up to become an avid sports fan. What she didn't expect, however, was that she would be tested about her fandom every step of the way.

"Oh, really, you're a Tigers fan?" one of her college buddies might start. And then she'd face questions to test her knowledge, to prove herself. Once she passed the first hurdle, the bar would be set higher for her.

Albertson, now a second-year law student at the University of Michigan, began thinking about these experiences as a Michigan undergrad in Andrei S. Markovits' class "Sports, Politics and Society."

Together, they've written a book, "Sportista: Female Fandom in the United States," studying the phenomenon of the dedicated female fan and how she fits into a male-dominated sports culture and conversation.

Even though more female fans follow professional sports than ever before, Albertson and Markovits focus on the most devoted among them. They argue that even these "sportistas" are not fully accepted as equal-status fans by their male counterparts.

"Any in-group doesn't like newcomers," Markovits explained. And men have historically drawn the lines around sports as male territory. Female encroachment is viewed with suspicion by some. For these gatekeepers, fandom is not measured by affection or loyalty toward a team, but by knowledge of its statistics, plays and history.

The professor and student co-authors observed that, generally, women and men experience spectator sports differently and speak a different language about the games they watch.

For women, it's a collective experience, Markovits says. They love a team, the players, the game itself. But once it's over, it's done.

"They'll watch ESPN while doing something else," he said. With men, however, the cerebral discussion -- the pregame, the postgame, the collecting of sports knowledge -- can be as important as the game itself.

"For men, sports is the default language ... that's what defines your male identity," Markovits said. "In the world of straight men, you are expected to be a sports fan simply by being a man."

Albertson said that among her male roommates in college, she tended to know less about the history of a particular team, even though she consumed just as much current sports coverage as the men.

"Unless you're in that conversation from a very young age ... the best quarterback of all time, a famous game from the '70s, that's my accent. I'll never be able to sound as fluent as someone who was speaking that from when they were born," she said.

But this should not discredit her as a serious fan, they argue.

Their research raises the question of why some men are threatened by women who are more interested in ESPN than the Kardashians. Is it because there are so few male-only spaces left in our culture that sports is a sacred realm?

Whatever the possible explanations, Markovits said he found it wonderful to discover that female fans have constructed their own sports world, and love being fans on their own terms.

"Ultimately, it doesn't matter much what men think," he said.

Albertson recounted one of her favorite anecdotes from the interviews.

Jillian, their subject, relayed an incident from fourth grade in which she told a boy in her class that she was a Mets fan. He challenged her to name even one player.

She did.

He countered with: Name the first four batters.

She did.

Not satisfied, he challenged her again with another test.

Finally, she named the entire roster.

A nearly identical grade-school conversation recently played out in a particular bedroom in St. Louis County. A husband and wife were both listening to a Cardinals game on the radio. After a close loss, the wife vocally expressed her dismay.

The husband responded: "OK, if you're such a Cardinals fan, name 20 players."

"I refuse to play this game," I said to him, in equal parts annoyed and amused.

Fourth grade was a very long time ago.

If the case of the New Jersey 18-year-old who moved out and is suing her parents for living expenses -- and her college fund -- has any child confused, here's some clarification on parental responsibility:

No one owes you an iPhone.

No one owes you a car when you turn 16.

No one owes you a wedding.

No one owes you a ticket to the college of your dreams.

And no one has an obligation to pay your bills once you move out.

Many parents choose to pay for many of these expenses out of love. If they cannot afford to pay for any of the above, they do not love you any less. That said, parents do have a responsibility to children for their education, but it may be different than the child's expectations.

We all know someone, perhaps ourselves, who managed to graduate college with little to no financial support from their parents. But the system of getting financial aid has changed. Costs are astronomically greater than when most of us attended school, and a college degree is much more important than it used to be.

Now, a student under the age of 25 cannot even apply for financial aid or be eligible for loans or grants unless their parents fill out the application and share their financial information. Even if the parents decide not to pay a dime toward college, the student is still considered a dependent. The parents' resources (income and assets) are still taken into account when determining how much a student receives in grants and loans.

The government, colleges and universities have all decided that the primary responsibility for paying for higher education rests on parents. This hurts students whose parents choose not to contribute at all.

The only recourse for a child in this situation is to file for legal emancipation, which can take a year or two to get through the financial aid process.

Can we expect a teenager to pay for his or her own college education, without any assistance, through working low-paying jobs?

In this year's survey of college costs, the College Board reports that a "moderate" budget for an in-state public college -- covering tuition, room, board and other expenses -- averaged $22,826 per academic year. A moderate budget for a private college averaged $44,750.

We have determined that 18-year-olds are adult enough to vote and fight in our wars, but we have made it nearly impossible for them to pay for higher education on their own.

Suing your parents for tuition money, like Rachel Canning is attempting to do, is an unprecedented way of trying to close that gap. Upon first reading the reports, it's easy to dismiss Canning as a spoiled brat. She doesn't want to follow her parents' rules, yet she wants them to keep paying her bills.

If she wants to move out and have the freedom to live by her own rules, there's a cost to that. There's a consequence for actions, meaning you've picked a boyfriend over your college fund.

A young woman who is an honors student, cheerleader and athlete at a private school obviously had some parental care and attention to bring her to that point. If her parents say their expectations were for her to show some respect, meet curfew and ditch a boyfriend they considered a bad influence, most people find that a reasonable position.

The dysfunctions of this particular family situation, the allegations of verbal and emotional abuse countered by denials and counter-allegations of lying, will be sorted out by the judge; he'll make a ruling next month on whether Canning's parents have to pay for college. He's already ruled that they don't have to pay her $650 a week in living expenses since she left their home voluntarily.

But outside the specific circumstances of this case, there's a larger question: If a student has the ability and desire to go to college, and the parents have resources to help pay for that, are they obligated to contribute?

Parents decide to bring a child into this world. We should be prepared to help them succeed and live up to their full potential. So, yes, we ought to fill out the financial aid forms and make some personal sacrifices to help our children, who should be taught this is a gift -- not an entitlement.

The financial aid process needs to be reformed to recognize that not all students receive money from their parents after they turn 18. If a student is willing to work, there should be a place for them to learn.

As someone who financed the vast majority of my own higher education, I believe my parents gave me more important gifts than a blank check for college tuition.

In addition to food and shelter until they turn 18, this is what parents, in fact, owe their children: love, compassion, encouragement, boundaries and the faith and training that they can be self-sufficient when they leave our care.

The bouncy kindergartner with blond ringlets framing her smiling, pixie face wants to talk about the "SpongeBob" episode she's watching, and sings while she skips around the room.

She's the same little girl who threw a fit and screamed the F-word 40 times in after-school daycare earlier this school year.

A few weeks ago, she was kicked out of the after-school program run by the YMCA at her elementary school in the Fort Zumwalt school district in suburban St. Louis. The giggly 5-year-old who ran out of her room to show me her blue Furby doll already has a thick file outlining her problems at school.

"You could not tell that she has anything going on inside. You could not tell all the havoc going on inside by looking at her," her mother, Liza Pequeno, said.

Pequeno, a single mother who works as a nurse and nursing home administrator, panicked when the Y Club expelled her daughter with little notice. They decided they could no longer handle her behavior. Pequeno had already used all her personal time at work in meeting with school officials trying to get a plan and services for her girl, who was falling apart and out of control so often at school.

Her daughter has been on medication for hyperactivity since she was 4 years old. She has been evaluated by a psychiatrist to see if she falls on the autism spectrum, perhaps with Asperger's syndrome, and is waiting for a diagnosis. A diagnosis could help her mother advocate for a more specialized treatment plan.

But at that moment, Pequeno was in crisis mode. Who would take care of her child when she had to work?

"I get no child support. It's all me. I can't lose my job," she said. "I felt lost."

Already, the emails from her kindergarten teacher describing all the troubles of each day left her in tears every night: Her daughter cursed at the teachers, threw toys, hit another child or had another screaming fit.

She wasn't so chaotic at home. Her mother knew how to calm her down. The other children and the frequent transitions at school overwhelmed her. She had previously been expelled from a private preschool, but her mother managed to find a preschool for special needs children.

With no other options, Pequeno asked her 70-year-old stepmother to pick up her daughter after school and watch her until she got home.

She could tell when her girl had a bad day in kindergarten. Her eyes would be red from crying all day. She would run and hide in her bedroom when she got home.

"Am I bad, Mommy?" her daughter asked her.

Pequeno knows her daughter's behaviors are difficult to manage, but she refuses to believe she's just "a bad kid."

"I think she's in there. She's deep in there. We just haven't gotten to her yet."

A 2005 nationwide study by Yale researchers found that preschools expel youngsters at three times the rate of public schools. Where do the parents of these youngest children, written off at such an early age, turn?

This little girl has the advantage of an educated mother, a strong advocate willing and able to navigate various agencies. Ideally, this child should have gotten more help in learning critical skills to regulate her emotions and read social cues from as young an age as possible. It makes economic sense to invest early in children rather than try to correct problems later.

If an after-school program expels a troubled 5-year-old, where do we expect her to go?

Pequeno has given up on the school district, where she says teachers and administrators never tried to understand her daughter.

"I feel like I lost all faith, hope, trust in the school system," she said. And she knows it's difficult for a teacher who has more than 20 children in a class to try to carve out the time and energy to figure out what's really going on with her daughter when she loses control. It's easier to send her away, so the other students can learn.

She decided to put up their house for sale and rent an apartment in the Parkway School District, which is served by the Special School District in St. Louis County -- a group specifically trained to work with special needs children. Pequeno hopes the teachers will be better equipped to help her daughter.

When I visited, Pequeno showed me a stunning, colorful portrait of a girl's divided face that her daughter drew in school.

"That's beautiful," I said to the bubbly child, who just wanted to play with me. "Who is it?"

"I don't know," she said at first, then paused for a second.

"It's me."

CAPTION 01: Photo by Aisha Sultan.)