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Thank you so much for writing this piece about youth sports. To your powerful and convincing list of problems with them, I would like to add one more: youth sports have destroyed the wide-ranging, free-flowing neighborhood play among big groups of mixed-age kids that we all enjoyed in generations past. I am old enough to remember these games fondly—our moms would turn us loose after school or all day on weekends and in the summers, and big groups of us would roam around using our bodies and imaginations and developing social skills during quirky games we made up ourselves. (“Orphanage” was one I remember playing—perhaps because of all the books I was reading?)
By contrast, when my kids were young, our affluent NJ suburb was a ghost town when school wasn’t in session because every kid was in organized sports. My daughter is physically disabled, and my son had no desire to do sports (nor, to be fair, did I), so they were excluded from any opportunity for informal play with other kids. This is a huge loss for kids and parents alike, and I am grateful that you are starting this conversation.
I absolutely had about 10 variations on “orphanage” with my friends in my neighborhood— we had very complex backstories and favors of the game depending on who was outside and playing that day. Also a Star Trek game we called “green glob” that involved us setting up elaborate forts and paths to save us from the evil alien grass. I hate that kids are basically not allowed to play outside anymore without parents supervising/ruining it with our adulting— so much fun is lost to them.
I'm not sure it's simply sports that's destroyed that, though maybe it varies by neighborhood. From my own observations, and talking to friends, the concentration of kids seems to be less, with neighborhoods more mixed in family composition. Also, kids aren't just in sports; they're in aftercare.
Yeah, you can't let your kids wander around in packs for hours anymore until they're more or less teenage. Even if they're hanging with neighbors, it's mediated.
Yes! I'm one of those moms that has the basic attitude that if it's sunny and less than 100 degrees then you play outside, and other than my next-door neighbors, we are the only ones. I was shocked when my brother told me that my nephew has spent almost zero time outside this summer. When I kept trying to make plans to meet up with our kids at the playground my brother complained that 80 degrees in the evenings was still too hot.
This is one of my favorite things you’ve written. Our society’s hostility to genuine leisure is, I think, one of the main reasons that everyone is so stressed and anxious all the time.
Spot on. The pressure on kids to "succeed" in academics is also deeply unhealthy: Any public elementary school is full of posters urging hard work and "excellence" on kids and teachers. There's not one word about discovering your interests, or enjoying what you learn.
Yes! When I was studying for the bar exam, I dropped thousands of dollars on a bar review course because, well, everyone did. I often thought, "If none of us did this, then none of us would have to," because the state wasn't going to fail everyone who took the bar. And that's how I feel about the academic arms race, too. We need everyone with kids to mutually disarm and just let kids be kids.
I so wish I had written this! We are Gen X parents (sounds better than saying 'old') of a very active, athletic 11 year old living in a suburban area where professionalization of children runs rampant. We've managed to opt out of this crazy system by sticking with LA parks and rec system sports, which are great and inexpensive, if looked down upon by the club crowd. It also helps that my son is naturally inclined to be multi-sport: he was really into swimming every day this summer when he was in the rec center jr. lifeguards program, and now he's really into playing flag football with his buddies at lunch, and has forgotten all about swimming. Soon, he'll be back into basketball and will have forgotten football... I think this is completely age appropriate yet it feels downright countercultural in our area.
We tried to "move up" to Little League--Little League!!-- once, for a short fall ball season, and it sucked the joy right out of baseball for my son. Practices and games were on an ever changing schedule, often resulting in weeks with 4-5 days of baseball. Weekday games were 2.5 hours long and went from after school right through dinner time. I kept looking around and thinking , "do ALL of these kids really love this much work at age 9?" This might be why an author I read (maybe in the book Simplicity Parenting?) lamented that the average kid drops out of team sports by age 11 or 12, which is the age where kids naturally turn from family towards peers and would be a great age to start team sports.
I teach at a D1 school and have taught many scholar-athletes. I delight in them and have tremendous respect for them-- no one can embody a growth mindset like someone who has worked so hard at one thing for so long. But I also don't want my son to have their experience, which is like having a physically punishing full time job that you can get fired from at any time, while going to an academically demanding school full time. Also, I want him to get through his K-16 education without needing a frequent buyers punch card from the orthopedist clinic.
Many commenters have mentioned the tournament racket. My favorite cautionary tale about that is a from a friend who got sucked into club soccer with one of her kids. When they spent thousands of dollars to go to a tournament in Arizona, they ended up playing a club from a neighboring suburb at home.
I do have ideas about fixing this system, most of which involve beefing up city-sponsored rec sports so that at least parents who might be on the fence see that there is a viable, low cost, low time option. Right now our rec center can never meet demand, and sign ups feature long lines at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, or hovering over your keyboard at midnight, hitting refresh to sign up before a program fills in 10 minutes. If we could hook this system up with our neighborhood schools and hire young adults to coach instead of relying on parent volunteers, we could solve inequitable participation and provide sports as after school care for elementary kids.
I got that from Simplicity Parenting too! Didn’t get a ton out of that book but the point about kids losing interest in a sport just when they could use it most really stuck with me (also lighting a candle at dinnertime).
Yes— the main other idea that has always resonated is alternating busy days with home days. But we’re a small family of introverts, so we probably would’ve reached that conclusion on our own.
Introvert family here too. We do best when we stick with one "thing" per day on the weekends. Covid lockdown really clarified this for me. Even with our introverted nature, we had been sliding into being fully "booked." We all do better with more downtime to just chill out at home. With kiddo now in kinder and other kids starting to play sports, my husband is voicing interest in that, and I'm just not ready to start that yet. Ugh.
It's hard to decide at that age. There are probably low-commitment fun rec sports for kinder, the main danger being that your kid will associate a particular sport with 'time to hang out with friends' and then if those friends start moving on to club, your kid might want to, also. And it's so much more fun, and often more exercise, to go to a playground, but hard if all the other kids are doing activities and sports and no time for park.
I thought starting rec team sports in 3rd grade was kind of a sweet spot. Aside from a couple of really intense sports like hockey or gymnastics, most kids aren't *great* at team sports yet and so it's not hard to jump in as a beginner. The low pressure rec teams and clinics have worked out for us so far. In the short term, I want my kid to move his body, have fun, and learn to be part of a team. Long term, I want him to know the rules of several sports in case he wants to play intramurals in high school or college. We've set the bar pretty low. :) If he had had a solid PE program in his elementary school, we might have skipped rec sports altogether.
I'm glad you got that same point so I know I remembered it correctly-- it was powerful and I'm definitely seeing that my 11 year old is way more into going to peer activities than he was before.
YES. And adjacent to all of this, we're also seeing injuries - from overuse, from getting too "professional" and specialized too early - much sooner and in a way that's especially challenging and scary for kids who are still growing.
I am firmly with you, and also I have an almost-five-year-old and I'm already feeling the swirling whirlpool inching closer of the temptation to get him involved in all the things, because that's what we're "supposed" to do. Right now the time commitment is the thing that's giving me the most pause (cheers to laziness!), but the money is such a huge factor, too.
Also related, I'm a pastor, and if I had a dollar for every time my older folks lamented sports schedules, games on Sundays, etc. I could pay for my kid to be on a travel team (ha!). Every time I encounter this, I try to frame it differently for them - I am much less concerned with the impact of youth sports/activities on families' church attendance, and much MORE concerned with how people are run ragged and caught up in the vicious cycle you describe. Sabbath rest is necessary in the rhythm of life, and people barely have time to breathe, let alone delight in creation, rest, worship, etc. I'd love to find a way to encourage people to opt out, but there are so many complicating factors.
Yes. I remember parents complaining about the weekends spent watching, and I was like, "Can't you just drop them off and pick them up?" They looked at me like I had two heads! Not even to suggest the kids don't play, just that you don't have to sit there and watch your 10-year-old all weekend (maybe play for 2 hours?) Neither of my parents came to my HS soccer games, and I didn't mind. I knew they loved me. The grind and the path is so engrained, I think so many people aren't even able to question it or come up for air (I'm talking about those with the privilege to choose.) Then how much too would people fall apart if they really looked at their values and living them. Our entire consumer-driven exploitive capitalist system demands unthinking compliance. I used to be a primary care provider and saw sooo many moms with young kids who were barely hanging on. Shuttling kids back and forth, fast food in the car between hockey and ballet, not enough sleep, too much alcohol, disconnected marriages... Easier to get an Rx for antidepressants or anxiety meds than examine things too closely. It's all sad.
Thank you so much for this. I do want to suggest that the problem applies well beyond the upper middle classes you identify (and note that Prince Harry, like me, is a Brit. Different attitudes prevail in the UK) I present on history in schools (I'm a former professor and a MG novelist), mostly Title I schools in the Deep South. I've learned that many working-class parents are anxious that only a sports scholarship will take their kids to college, and while they may not be able to afford traveling teams, they do push kids into every sporting opportunity. In rural Georgia, I talked with a kindly and exasperated elementary school coach who spoke of trying to explain to parents that his students who eventually win athletic scholarships are almost all girls, not football players. In California, I spoke in a rural, almost entirely poor Latino school, and learned that the same applied. Public school academic curriculum is so poor, kids have to be willing just to jump pointless and tedious hoops to get into college via their academic abilities. Add to that the ridiculous amount of time spent in practices, discouraging reading and hobbies, and this becomes a very widespread issue, with most kids arriving in college without a life of the mind. Btw, I'm a Brit, played hockey in my mostly working-class school in the 70s, and we only practiced a couple of lunchtimes a week. Most of us were rubbish at the sport, and loved it. Watching my son growing up in the States, I have been shocked by the exclusivity and cruelty of this system. It prizes strength and confidence above all else, and respects athleticism over character and learning. This doesn't end well for any of us. Thank you again.
Perhaps if we in the US offered free or drastically reduced costs for higher education (in particular state colleges and universities), families wouldn't feel pushed into sports or the military to get an opportunity at a college degree.
I love this, and am frantically searching for a description of our local ‘Perry League,’ vehicular is the antithesis of the professionalizing of kid sport. Perry league is a t-ball league for kids 3-10 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and it is basically a sport free for all in which you hit if you want, you catch if you can, and you run with abandon, but no one keeps score. Sometimes your child will spend the entire game playing in the sand-that is ok! Sometimes they’ll form unofficial teams and all run the bases at once-that is ok! Some kids are great, sold kids are terrible, no one gets pressured or made fun of and the parents cheer and chat and generally chill. Totally donation based. I cried when I read about it when I was planning my move here. The idea of my daughter playing in an unbridled and non-competitive way brought me to tears, that’s how rare it is. I love it here.
I brought 2 kids (boys) through this system and I agree with every single point made here. We are a divorced family so we didn't have total control--and it's So Hard to be the parents who says no when the other parent is all "We have to do this honey." It tested a fracture that already existed. There were so many arguments. And then, when they reached middle school, it got really serious--to the point that grown men were competing to coach them. And they were not nice men. One told the lacrosse team to "take their tampons out" and play like men. Another hit my son in the head with a lacrosse ball. Others slighted kids for their weight, their poor performances and some for reasons we never understood. There was some elitist popularity contest happening among parents that we were never involved in. But then we felt little guilty for not being involved in it. There were tournaments all up and down the east coast that they would fly to as middle schoolers. We refused, but the boys' bio mom would do it. My husband always said there is nothing to be gained by playing 11 year-olds in Florida versus 11 year-olds in NJ. And the cost!! All these leagues popping up everywhere demanding cash. Private coaching demanding cash. Not to mention how a working parent gets them to all these places. So elitist and also so weird!! These dads marching up and down the sidelines of a third grade basketball game, arms crossed, faces in grim assessment, like they're college coaches. On the one hand it's Fight Club pathetic. On the other, it involves little kids. Anyway, thanks for calling attention to this.
I've thought about this since reading Unequal Childhoods before having my kid (who's now 17). She didn't turn out to be sporty, so we avoided the team sports question, but everything else was also supposed to be treated as a lifelong commitment. Dance, circus (escalated to 2 hours 4 times a week by age 10), & that was the community, low stress school. The local girls' chorus has shirts they sell that say "I can't, I've got chorus" - I never let my kid join, I just couldn't deal. There was no trying out a new activity at, say, 11, in many arenas - you would be "up against" kids who had been doing it intensely since they were 5, & expected to meet that standard.
I often think about how what you call the bourgeois in this piece has shifted from believing they beat the lower classes on talent to believing they beat them on hard work & "grit" per current meritocratic ideals. But how it's a kind of theater - they set up these situations where their kids have to work incredibly hard - harder than anyone else has time for - & then clear everything else from their lives & ignore that part when they win. (The same applies to a degree to the escalation of high school & middle school homework loads too.) There's also a LOT of manipulation of supposedly intrinsic motivations - it just so happens your kid is SUPER intrinsically motivated on fencing & STEM competitions, huh? LOVES it? Right.
Oh my gosh - as a former chorus kid, I'm somewhat outraged. I spent my high school in chorus (including an exchange trip to France, that was so great!) - one practice a week, Wednesday night after school, and a few shows a year. Y'know why I did it? Because I LOVED it.
And then I went to college, and joined the chorus there - because it was FUN. It's also how I met my now-husband, though we got to be good friends and started dating a few years later.
It kills me to turn fun into a joy-sapping obligation. Let people love things, omg!
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!!!! I am from rural TN and a scholarship to Georgetown changed the trajectory of my life. I worked my ass off so my future kids wouldn’t need that same trajectory change, which zero of my Wharton grad school classmates understand. I paid it forward, in a sense. I have 4 kids and LOVE being a mom. We dont participate in the bourgeois machine of sports because my kids aren’t interested and honestly dont need it. Everyone thinks I’ve lost my mind, that I’m selfish and hurting my kids and I DONT EVEN WORK!!!! (I actually run a small business but it brings me joy so clearly it will never count).
You nailed so, so much in this piece. The stability I hope my kids will have will come from a childhood that resisted the pressures of hustle culture and insulated them from the looming threat of medical bankruptcy that defined my own childhood.
I have two boys, 2 and 7, and I am doing everything I can to fight against this. I literally do not understand how anyone can make these commitments work with their life— even if I was willing to give up all of my non-work time, I don’t have enough non-work time to accommodate the demands. Working in student affairs at a university, and getting the small amount of exposure to D-1 athletics that I have had, has convinced me I would NEVER want my kids to play sports in college anyway— it’s so gross and exploitative. (Although I guess my “I’ve been working here for 15 years already and now I have kids, so I guess I’ll just stay here for the next 18 years until both kids are through college so that I can use my tuition remission benefits for them” is also a deeply problematic plan and explains why half of my department is still working in jobs they hate and are totally burned out by until their kids graduate).
I’m glad someone mentioned that the supposed end goal of competing in college is absolutely brutal as well. The life of a “student athlete” is dominated by the “athlete” (constant travel/missing class, inability to participate in other areas of campus life or work).
This all rings so true to me. I think this mindset also creates a weird hierarchy of which kids' activities are legit and which are not. My brother in law's family is a Hockey family (in Ottawa, so, really intense). The oldest kid is a boy and he plays in some high level kids league that seems to take up most of the family's time. The middle girl is made to play ringette, but she loves karate and horseback riding. She's allowed to do these things but gets no support - e.g. her mom refuses to even go to her riding lessons because it's not a "real" sport. Ironically, she is a bit of a handful, and I think she is showing a natural inclination for activities that require a lot of self-discipline, learning patience and control, that should be nurtured! It really makes me sad.
This article was wonderful - thoughtful, provocative, and tenacious in its accuracy. I was a college athlete myself, and struggled after graduating to find exercise I enjoyed - and to do it myself without a coach structuring it for me. I was in an "all or nothing" mindset for so long and had no awareness of it until I had to. Not to mention how much being an athlete was my identity, so I had to re-learn who I was without a sport. We've really put an emphasis on our kids doing something to move their bodies each day, and trying to find family activities like ping pong, spike ball, 4 square that are just fun ways to move and play. I hope they can build healthier habits that way than I did.
We have a young teen and a tween right now. Our teen plays a club sport - soccer. We were lucky enough to have a neighborhood team that was low key with one practice a week and one game a week in fall and spring, much more like what I remember of youth sports growing up. By the time she got to 8th grade, most of her neighborhood team went their separate ways and we tentatively picked a club team because she enjoyed it and wanted to keep playing. Her club team has been a great experience for her with a positive, skills-based coach who has encouraged her and helped her get better. We've had one out of town tournament in two years' time, and it was a couple hours' drive. We lucked out; I cringe when I hear many parents' stories on other teams. It's still a lot of money and a significant time commitment, and I wish there were other options because my kiddo has a lot of other social interests and activities she wants to try but the soccer schedule doesn't always allow for it. I hate the "all or nothing" lack of options that Anne's article speaks to, that to play a kid has to play at a high and elite level, when really sports could be fun and something done on the fly or at maximum through a rec league. Most kids at my daughter's high school cannot make the high school team if they are not also playing that sport at a club level.
My tween is not a fan of team sports overall, which he learned by trying baseball, soccer, and basketball. The aggressiveness and peer meanness started at a much earlier age with his peers on recreational teams, the same kids who eventually moved to club teams. I found the same for parents as well. I'd love for my kids to have a more free-play lifestyle with friends in our neighborhood, but often his peers are busy playing their club schedules and are not available. So it absolutely does become a catch-22 where my kids' main chance to see their friends outside of school is by participating in the same structured activities.
The parent exhaustion is real and I find so few other parents who are honest about it, which increases the sense of shame for those of us who are self-aware enough to realize how draining the weekend kids' activities can be.
This is tangentially related, but definitely something I noticed growing up that gave me some pause. My brother and I are three years apart (I'm older), and he was always more into sports than me. We grew up in a very small town, so the sports he played were nowhere near the level discussed in this piece, but I would still notice that whenever our extended family got together, they would always talk to him about the sports he played/would play in the future.
I don't think of my extended family as being particularly sporty, but his involvement gave them an easy shorthand to connect with him, whereas my interests were more changeable and less obvious, so it seemed a bit like they didn't quite know what to do with me.
It makes me wonder a bit if this push toward more and more professional sports comes also from adults wanting to have an easy way for themselves to identify what their kid's "thing" is, and communicate that to other adults.
The only professional sports prior to the 20th century were boxing and horse racing. Maybe we all need to stop watching and attending. That also goes for college sports, which exist nowhere besides the US, and very limited in the UK. Take away professional sports and you take away most of the incentives talked about here. I enjoy attending MLS games with my husband but would just as soon take a walk, bike ride, or trip to a museum or concert. The resources spent on kids, college and professional sports could be used for lots of other less harmful activities. A lot of adults would be healthier playing flag football together rather than gathering to watch college game days on Saturday and pros on Sunday while they ate and drank too much. And for gods sake end the Olympics. I guess it was a good idea 100 years ago but has long outlived its charm.
Great article. I want to add that injuries to the development of a child's love of play, my nieces and nephews who were encouraged/impressed/driven to participate in soccer, rugby, and football have all suffered physical injuries (as do all athletes, I am sure) that occasionally were serious enough to cause a life-long problem. The physical injury quotient of child sports participation is barely mentioned in this arena. It can be significantly disabling and expensive. We hear about injuries to professional athletes, but not much about those to kids, unless it's linked to other news-worthy matters, like heat exhaustion or nascent heart problems. I don't think parents realize this when they enter this "funnel."
Neither I nor my husband were interested or participated in any sports. My son tried "tether ball" at a young age, but then settled on aikido with a passion. Unfortunately, he did develop injuries, but his pursuit was his choice. He was an outsider with his cousins, but then so were we with his parents.
DO NOT GET ME STARTED!!!! I am a run coach, and conversations with prospective clients turned me off to gymnastics swimming and soccer for my kids. No one should have 4 shoulder or knee surgeries before turning 15!!!!
Right??? And think of the few who do make it to college or the pros. We have to wonder if their pro careers are shorter because they start playing SO hard and get SO I jured so young. Like, is their pipeline improving anything?
My daughter’s soccer club offers “ACL Insurance” that pays out a prorated refund of club fees if your kid develops an ACL injury during the season. I can’t imagine offering this product unless there was incredible demand.
Other than problems with ligaments, I would like to know how much coaches or managers of children's sports that could involve head injuries are aware of the long-term effects of concussions, which have been spotlighted in the media with NFL players. I think it causes serious problems in cognition.
Other than soccer or gymnastics, Little League baseball pitchers can develop severe shoulder and arm problems.
So, parents NEED to be told about these hazards when they sign their kids up for these "professional" kid sports. It isn't just fun and patience and grit. And be prepared to weather the potential medical problems.
Yes! I remember how shocked I was in high school in the early 2000s when I saw how many of my peers had career-ending injuries and required surgeries in high school! I had a cousin who played football from elementary through high school, joined the army, and then had an honorable discharge halfway through his commitment because his knees were completely destroyed from football and were never the same after surgery. He's been floundering since then without any clear direction because he put everything into his physical prowess and has no idea what to do now.
Thank you SO MUCH for writing this, and especially for including mentions of the sibling sacrifices that sports demand.
My son, age 4, would love to play hockey. Hockey here starts at 5. It's 3 practices a week, and travel at least every 2 weekends, if not every weekend, from September to late April, at least. He has 2 parents, and 2 siblings - EVEN IF I was inclined to do this for him (to pay the outrageous costs, to schlep him to the arena and have him miss sleep at his age, to spend MY time freezing in a cold and smelly arena - which, let me assure you, I'm not), there's just no way I can make his sister and his younger brother sacrifice THIER mornings and weekends in service of HIS sport. And there are no hockey teams that don't require this within a 30km radius, so: have fun, kid, there are some local kids at the outdoor rink, I'll buy you a helmet and a hockey stick, have fun. But you're not joining a team.
Ros, it is such a bummer when certain sports are only available in this extreme club form--we're having the same problem with water polo, which my son wants to try. Even with just one kid, I can't see how we go to far flung practices 3x/week and give up every saturday.
Weirdly because we're in LA, hockey for young kids isn't common so they try to make it attractive, at least at beginner levels, with fairly low commitment. But I'm from Minnesota, so I get the deep, super young, hockey culture you're facing.
Thank you so much for writing this piece about youth sports. To your powerful and convincing list of problems with them, I would like to add one more: youth sports have destroyed the wide-ranging, free-flowing neighborhood play among big groups of mixed-age kids that we all enjoyed in generations past. I am old enough to remember these games fondly—our moms would turn us loose after school or all day on weekends and in the summers, and big groups of us would roam around using our bodies and imaginations and developing social skills during quirky games we made up ourselves. (“Orphanage” was one I remember playing—perhaps because of all the books I was reading?)
By contrast, when my kids were young, our affluent NJ suburb was a ghost town when school wasn’t in session because every kid was in organized sports. My daughter is physically disabled, and my son had no desire to do sports (nor, to be fair, did I), so they were excluded from any opportunity for informal play with other kids. This is a huge loss for kids and parents alike, and I am grateful that you are starting this conversation.
I absolutely had about 10 variations on “orphanage” with my friends in my neighborhood— we had very complex backstories and favors of the game depending on who was outside and playing that day. Also a Star Trek game we called “green glob” that involved us setting up elaborate forts and paths to save us from the evil alien grass. I hate that kids are basically not allowed to play outside anymore without parents supervising/ruining it with our adulting— so much fun is lost to them.
I'm not sure it's simply sports that's destroyed that, though maybe it varies by neighborhood. From my own observations, and talking to friends, the concentration of kids seems to be less, with neighborhoods more mixed in family composition. Also, kids aren't just in sports; they're in aftercare.
Yeah, you can't let your kids wander around in packs for hours anymore until they're more or less teenage. Even if they're hanging with neighbors, it's mediated.
Yes! I'm one of those moms that has the basic attitude that if it's sunny and less than 100 degrees then you play outside, and other than my next-door neighbors, we are the only ones. I was shocked when my brother told me that my nephew has spent almost zero time outside this summer. When I kept trying to make plans to meet up with our kids at the playground my brother complained that 80 degrees in the evenings was still too hot.
This is one of my favorite things you’ve written. Our society’s hostility to genuine leisure is, I think, one of the main reasons that everyone is so stressed and anxious all the time.
Spot on. The pressure on kids to "succeed" in academics is also deeply unhealthy: Any public elementary school is full of posters urging hard work and "excellence" on kids and teachers. There's not one word about discovering your interests, or enjoying what you learn.
Yes! When I was studying for the bar exam, I dropped thousands of dollars on a bar review course because, well, everyone did. I often thought, "If none of us did this, then none of us would have to," because the state wasn't going to fail everyone who took the bar. And that's how I feel about the academic arms race, too. We need everyone with kids to mutually disarm and just let kids be kids.
Well said!
I so wish I had written this! We are Gen X parents (sounds better than saying 'old') of a very active, athletic 11 year old living in a suburban area where professionalization of children runs rampant. We've managed to opt out of this crazy system by sticking with LA parks and rec system sports, which are great and inexpensive, if looked down upon by the club crowd. It also helps that my son is naturally inclined to be multi-sport: he was really into swimming every day this summer when he was in the rec center jr. lifeguards program, and now he's really into playing flag football with his buddies at lunch, and has forgotten all about swimming. Soon, he'll be back into basketball and will have forgotten football... I think this is completely age appropriate yet it feels downright countercultural in our area.
We tried to "move up" to Little League--Little League!!-- once, for a short fall ball season, and it sucked the joy right out of baseball for my son. Practices and games were on an ever changing schedule, often resulting in weeks with 4-5 days of baseball. Weekday games were 2.5 hours long and went from after school right through dinner time. I kept looking around and thinking , "do ALL of these kids really love this much work at age 9?" This might be why an author I read (maybe in the book Simplicity Parenting?) lamented that the average kid drops out of team sports by age 11 or 12, which is the age where kids naturally turn from family towards peers and would be a great age to start team sports.
I teach at a D1 school and have taught many scholar-athletes. I delight in them and have tremendous respect for them-- no one can embody a growth mindset like someone who has worked so hard at one thing for so long. But I also don't want my son to have their experience, which is like having a physically punishing full time job that you can get fired from at any time, while going to an academically demanding school full time. Also, I want him to get through his K-16 education without needing a frequent buyers punch card from the orthopedist clinic.
Many commenters have mentioned the tournament racket. My favorite cautionary tale about that is a from a friend who got sucked into club soccer with one of her kids. When they spent thousands of dollars to go to a tournament in Arizona, they ended up playing a club from a neighboring suburb at home.
I do have ideas about fixing this system, most of which involve beefing up city-sponsored rec sports so that at least parents who might be on the fence see that there is a viable, low cost, low time option. Right now our rec center can never meet demand, and sign ups feature long lines at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, or hovering over your keyboard at midnight, hitting refresh to sign up before a program fills in 10 minutes. If we could hook this system up with our neighborhood schools and hire young adults to coach instead of relying on parent volunteers, we could solve inequitable participation and provide sports as after school care for elementary kids.
I got that from Simplicity Parenting too! Didn’t get a ton out of that book but the point about kids losing interest in a sport just when they could use it most really stuck with me (also lighting a candle at dinnertime).
Yes— the main other idea that has always resonated is alternating busy days with home days. But we’re a small family of introverts, so we probably would’ve reached that conclusion on our own.
Introvert family here too. We do best when we stick with one "thing" per day on the weekends. Covid lockdown really clarified this for me. Even with our introverted nature, we had been sliding into being fully "booked." We all do better with more downtime to just chill out at home. With kiddo now in kinder and other kids starting to play sports, my husband is voicing interest in that, and I'm just not ready to start that yet. Ugh.
It's hard to decide at that age. There are probably low-commitment fun rec sports for kinder, the main danger being that your kid will associate a particular sport with 'time to hang out with friends' and then if those friends start moving on to club, your kid might want to, also. And it's so much more fun, and often more exercise, to go to a playground, but hard if all the other kids are doing activities and sports and no time for park.
I thought starting rec team sports in 3rd grade was kind of a sweet spot. Aside from a couple of really intense sports like hockey or gymnastics, most kids aren't *great* at team sports yet and so it's not hard to jump in as a beginner. The low pressure rec teams and clinics have worked out for us so far. In the short term, I want my kid to move his body, have fun, and learn to be part of a team. Long term, I want him to know the rules of several sports in case he wants to play intramurals in high school or college. We've set the bar pretty low. :) If he had had a solid PE program in his elementary school, we might have skipped rec sports altogether.
Maybe it is just a good book for introvert families :)
His point about sports really stuck with me though.
I'm glad you got that same point so I know I remembered it correctly-- it was powerful and I'm definitely seeing that my 11 year old is way more into going to peer activities than he was before.
Same.
YES. And adjacent to all of this, we're also seeing injuries - from overuse, from getting too "professional" and specialized too early - much sooner and in a way that's especially challenging and scary for kids who are still growing.
I am firmly with you, and also I have an almost-five-year-old and I'm already feeling the swirling whirlpool inching closer of the temptation to get him involved in all the things, because that's what we're "supposed" to do. Right now the time commitment is the thing that's giving me the most pause (cheers to laziness!), but the money is such a huge factor, too.
Also related, I'm a pastor, and if I had a dollar for every time my older folks lamented sports schedules, games on Sundays, etc. I could pay for my kid to be on a travel team (ha!). Every time I encounter this, I try to frame it differently for them - I am much less concerned with the impact of youth sports/activities on families' church attendance, and much MORE concerned with how people are run ragged and caught up in the vicious cycle you describe. Sabbath rest is necessary in the rhythm of life, and people barely have time to breathe, let alone delight in creation, rest, worship, etc. I'd love to find a way to encourage people to opt out, but there are so many complicating factors.
Yes. I remember parents complaining about the weekends spent watching, and I was like, "Can't you just drop them off and pick them up?" They looked at me like I had two heads! Not even to suggest the kids don't play, just that you don't have to sit there and watch your 10-year-old all weekend (maybe play for 2 hours?) Neither of my parents came to my HS soccer games, and I didn't mind. I knew they loved me. The grind and the path is so engrained, I think so many people aren't even able to question it or come up for air (I'm talking about those with the privilege to choose.) Then how much too would people fall apart if they really looked at their values and living them. Our entire consumer-driven exploitive capitalist system demands unthinking compliance. I used to be a primary care provider and saw sooo many moms with young kids who were barely hanging on. Shuttling kids back and forth, fast food in the car between hockey and ballet, not enough sleep, too much alcohol, disconnected marriages... Easier to get an Rx for antidepressants or anxiety meds than examine things too closely. It's all sad.
Thank you so much for this. I do want to suggest that the problem applies well beyond the upper middle classes you identify (and note that Prince Harry, like me, is a Brit. Different attitudes prevail in the UK) I present on history in schools (I'm a former professor and a MG novelist), mostly Title I schools in the Deep South. I've learned that many working-class parents are anxious that only a sports scholarship will take their kids to college, and while they may not be able to afford traveling teams, they do push kids into every sporting opportunity. In rural Georgia, I talked with a kindly and exasperated elementary school coach who spoke of trying to explain to parents that his students who eventually win athletic scholarships are almost all girls, not football players. In California, I spoke in a rural, almost entirely poor Latino school, and learned that the same applied. Public school academic curriculum is so poor, kids have to be willing just to jump pointless and tedious hoops to get into college via their academic abilities. Add to that the ridiculous amount of time spent in practices, discouraging reading and hobbies, and this becomes a very widespread issue, with most kids arriving in college without a life of the mind. Btw, I'm a Brit, played hockey in my mostly working-class school in the 70s, and we only practiced a couple of lunchtimes a week. Most of us were rubbish at the sport, and loved it. Watching my son growing up in the States, I have been shocked by the exclusivity and cruelty of this system. It prizes strength and confidence above all else, and respects athleticism over character and learning. This doesn't end well for any of us. Thank you again.
Such a good point about all this squeezing out reading & hobbies.
Thanks, Cyd. It's been a soapbox subject of mine for years.
Perhaps if we in the US offered free or drastically reduced costs for higher education (in particular state colleges and universities), families wouldn't feel pushed into sports or the military to get an opportunity at a college degree.
I love this, and am frantically searching for a description of our local ‘Perry League,’ vehicular is the antithesis of the professionalizing of kid sport. Perry league is a t-ball league for kids 3-10 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and it is basically a sport free for all in which you hit if you want, you catch if you can, and you run with abandon, but no one keeps score. Sometimes your child will spend the entire game playing in the sand-that is ok! Sometimes they’ll form unofficial teams and all run the bases at once-that is ok! Some kids are great, sold kids are terrible, no one gets pressured or made fun of and the parents cheer and chat and generally chill. Totally donation based. I cried when I read about it when I was planning my move here. The idea of my daughter playing in an unbridled and non-competitive way brought me to tears, that’s how rare it is. I love it here.
This needs so many edits because I didn’t wear my glasses, but you get the point (I hope!)
Shout out to Yellow Springs!!
I brought 2 kids (boys) through this system and I agree with every single point made here. We are a divorced family so we didn't have total control--and it's So Hard to be the parents who says no when the other parent is all "We have to do this honey." It tested a fracture that already existed. There were so many arguments. And then, when they reached middle school, it got really serious--to the point that grown men were competing to coach them. And they were not nice men. One told the lacrosse team to "take their tampons out" and play like men. Another hit my son in the head with a lacrosse ball. Others slighted kids for their weight, their poor performances and some for reasons we never understood. There was some elitist popularity contest happening among parents that we were never involved in. But then we felt little guilty for not being involved in it. There were tournaments all up and down the east coast that they would fly to as middle schoolers. We refused, but the boys' bio mom would do it. My husband always said there is nothing to be gained by playing 11 year-olds in Florida versus 11 year-olds in NJ. And the cost!! All these leagues popping up everywhere demanding cash. Private coaching demanding cash. Not to mention how a working parent gets them to all these places. So elitist and also so weird!! These dads marching up and down the sidelines of a third grade basketball game, arms crossed, faces in grim assessment, like they're college coaches. On the one hand it's Fight Club pathetic. On the other, it involves little kids. Anyway, thanks for calling attention to this.
I've thought about this since reading Unequal Childhoods before having my kid (who's now 17). She didn't turn out to be sporty, so we avoided the team sports question, but everything else was also supposed to be treated as a lifelong commitment. Dance, circus (escalated to 2 hours 4 times a week by age 10), & that was the community, low stress school. The local girls' chorus has shirts they sell that say "I can't, I've got chorus" - I never let my kid join, I just couldn't deal. There was no trying out a new activity at, say, 11, in many arenas - you would be "up against" kids who had been doing it intensely since they were 5, & expected to meet that standard.
I often think about how what you call the bourgeois in this piece has shifted from believing they beat the lower classes on talent to believing they beat them on hard work & "grit" per current meritocratic ideals. But how it's a kind of theater - they set up these situations where their kids have to work incredibly hard - harder than anyone else has time for - & then clear everything else from their lives & ignore that part when they win. (The same applies to a degree to the escalation of high school & middle school homework loads too.) There's also a LOT of manipulation of supposedly intrinsic motivations - it just so happens your kid is SUPER intrinsically motivated on fencing & STEM competitions, huh? LOVES it? Right.
Anyway, excellent polemic - thank you!
Oh my gosh - as a former chorus kid, I'm somewhat outraged. I spent my high school in chorus (including an exchange trip to France, that was so great!) - one practice a week, Wednesday night after school, and a few shows a year. Y'know why I did it? Because I LOVED it.
And then I went to college, and joined the chorus there - because it was FUN. It's also how I met my now-husband, though we got to be good friends and started dating a few years later.
It kills me to turn fun into a joy-sapping obligation. Let people love things, omg!
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!!!! I am from rural TN and a scholarship to Georgetown changed the trajectory of my life. I worked my ass off so my future kids wouldn’t need that same trajectory change, which zero of my Wharton grad school classmates understand. I paid it forward, in a sense. I have 4 kids and LOVE being a mom. We dont participate in the bourgeois machine of sports because my kids aren’t interested and honestly dont need it. Everyone thinks I’ve lost my mind, that I’m selfish and hurting my kids and I DONT EVEN WORK!!!! (I actually run a small business but it brings me joy so clearly it will never count).
You nailed so, so much in this piece. The stability I hope my kids will have will come from a childhood that resisted the pressures of hustle culture and insulated them from the looming threat of medical bankruptcy that defined my own childhood.
I have two boys, 2 and 7, and I am doing everything I can to fight against this. I literally do not understand how anyone can make these commitments work with their life— even if I was willing to give up all of my non-work time, I don’t have enough non-work time to accommodate the demands. Working in student affairs at a university, and getting the small amount of exposure to D-1 athletics that I have had, has convinced me I would NEVER want my kids to play sports in college anyway— it’s so gross and exploitative. (Although I guess my “I’ve been working here for 15 years already and now I have kids, so I guess I’ll just stay here for the next 18 years until both kids are through college so that I can use my tuition remission benefits for them” is also a deeply problematic plan and explains why half of my department is still working in jobs they hate and are totally burned out by until their kids graduate).
I’m glad someone mentioned that the supposed end goal of competing in college is absolutely brutal as well. The life of a “student athlete” is dominated by the “athlete” (constant travel/missing class, inability to participate in other areas of campus life or work).
Kelly, I'm a former professor, and my heart goes out to you. It's an atrocious system.
This all rings so true to me. I think this mindset also creates a weird hierarchy of which kids' activities are legit and which are not. My brother in law's family is a Hockey family (in Ottawa, so, really intense). The oldest kid is a boy and he plays in some high level kids league that seems to take up most of the family's time. The middle girl is made to play ringette, but she loves karate and horseback riding. She's allowed to do these things but gets no support - e.g. her mom refuses to even go to her riding lessons because it's not a "real" sport. Ironically, she is a bit of a handful, and I think she is showing a natural inclination for activities that require a lot of self-discipline, learning patience and control, that should be nurtured! It really makes me sad.
This article was wonderful - thoughtful, provocative, and tenacious in its accuracy. I was a college athlete myself, and struggled after graduating to find exercise I enjoyed - and to do it myself without a coach structuring it for me. I was in an "all or nothing" mindset for so long and had no awareness of it until I had to. Not to mention how much being an athlete was my identity, so I had to re-learn who I was without a sport. We've really put an emphasis on our kids doing something to move their bodies each day, and trying to find family activities like ping pong, spike ball, 4 square that are just fun ways to move and play. I hope they can build healthier habits that way than I did.
We have a young teen and a tween right now. Our teen plays a club sport - soccer. We were lucky enough to have a neighborhood team that was low key with one practice a week and one game a week in fall and spring, much more like what I remember of youth sports growing up. By the time she got to 8th grade, most of her neighborhood team went their separate ways and we tentatively picked a club team because she enjoyed it and wanted to keep playing. Her club team has been a great experience for her with a positive, skills-based coach who has encouraged her and helped her get better. We've had one out of town tournament in two years' time, and it was a couple hours' drive. We lucked out; I cringe when I hear many parents' stories on other teams. It's still a lot of money and a significant time commitment, and I wish there were other options because my kiddo has a lot of other social interests and activities she wants to try but the soccer schedule doesn't always allow for it. I hate the "all or nothing" lack of options that Anne's article speaks to, that to play a kid has to play at a high and elite level, when really sports could be fun and something done on the fly or at maximum through a rec league. Most kids at my daughter's high school cannot make the high school team if they are not also playing that sport at a club level.
My tween is not a fan of team sports overall, which he learned by trying baseball, soccer, and basketball. The aggressiveness and peer meanness started at a much earlier age with his peers on recreational teams, the same kids who eventually moved to club teams. I found the same for parents as well. I'd love for my kids to have a more free-play lifestyle with friends in our neighborhood, but often his peers are busy playing their club schedules and are not available. So it absolutely does become a catch-22 where my kids' main chance to see their friends outside of school is by participating in the same structured activities.
The parent exhaustion is real and I find so few other parents who are honest about it, which increases the sense of shame for those of us who are self-aware enough to realize how draining the weekend kids' activities can be.
This is tangentially related, but definitely something I noticed growing up that gave me some pause. My brother and I are three years apart (I'm older), and he was always more into sports than me. We grew up in a very small town, so the sports he played were nowhere near the level discussed in this piece, but I would still notice that whenever our extended family got together, they would always talk to him about the sports he played/would play in the future.
I don't think of my extended family as being particularly sporty, but his involvement gave them an easy shorthand to connect with him, whereas my interests were more changeable and less obvious, so it seemed a bit like they didn't quite know what to do with me.
It makes me wonder a bit if this push toward more and more professional sports comes also from adults wanting to have an easy way for themselves to identify what their kid's "thing" is, and communicate that to other adults.
The only professional sports prior to the 20th century were boxing and horse racing. Maybe we all need to stop watching and attending. That also goes for college sports, which exist nowhere besides the US, and very limited in the UK. Take away professional sports and you take away most of the incentives talked about here. I enjoy attending MLS games with my husband but would just as soon take a walk, bike ride, or trip to a museum or concert. The resources spent on kids, college and professional sports could be used for lots of other less harmful activities. A lot of adults would be healthier playing flag football together rather than gathering to watch college game days on Saturday and pros on Sunday while they ate and drank too much. And for gods sake end the Olympics. I guess it was a good idea 100 years ago but has long outlived its charm.
Great article. I want to add that injuries to the development of a child's love of play, my nieces and nephews who were encouraged/impressed/driven to participate in soccer, rugby, and football have all suffered physical injuries (as do all athletes, I am sure) that occasionally were serious enough to cause a life-long problem. The physical injury quotient of child sports participation is barely mentioned in this arena. It can be significantly disabling and expensive. We hear about injuries to professional athletes, but not much about those to kids, unless it's linked to other news-worthy matters, like heat exhaustion or nascent heart problems. I don't think parents realize this when they enter this "funnel."
Neither I nor my husband were interested or participated in any sports. My son tried "tether ball" at a young age, but then settled on aikido with a passion. Unfortunately, he did develop injuries, but his pursuit was his choice. He was an outsider with his cousins, but then so were we with his parents.
DO NOT GET ME STARTED!!!! I am a run coach, and conversations with prospective clients turned me off to gymnastics swimming and soccer for my kids. No one should have 4 shoulder or knee surgeries before turning 15!!!!
Good lord, that's insane! And how much school gets missed while these kids recover from these surgeries?!
Once again, I'm glad I was not a sporty kid.
Right??? And think of the few who do make it to college or the pros. We have to wonder if their pro careers are shorter because they start playing SO hard and get SO I jured so young. Like, is their pipeline improving anything?
My daughter’s soccer club offers “ACL Insurance” that pays out a prorated refund of club fees if your kid develops an ACL injury during the season. I can’t imagine offering this product unless there was incredible demand.
Other than problems with ligaments, I would like to know how much coaches or managers of children's sports that could involve head injuries are aware of the long-term effects of concussions, which have been spotlighted in the media with NFL players. I think it causes serious problems in cognition.
Other than soccer or gymnastics, Little League baseball pitchers can develop severe shoulder and arm problems.
So, parents NEED to be told about these hazards when they sign their kids up for these "professional" kid sports. It isn't just fun and patience and grit. And be prepared to weather the potential medical problems.
Wow!! In my experience teaching athletes, women’s soccer seemed to be by far the most injurious.
WOW. Would 100% avoid anything that offered that kind of coverage (I used to work in reinsurance)
holy cow
Yes! I remember how shocked I was in high school in the early 2000s when I saw how many of my peers had career-ending injuries and required surgeries in high school! I had a cousin who played football from elementary through high school, joined the army, and then had an honorable discharge halfway through his commitment because his knees were completely destroyed from football and were never the same after surgery. He's been floundering since then without any clear direction because he put everything into his physical prowess and has no idea what to do now.
Thank you SO MUCH for writing this, and especially for including mentions of the sibling sacrifices that sports demand.
My son, age 4, would love to play hockey. Hockey here starts at 5. It's 3 practices a week, and travel at least every 2 weekends, if not every weekend, from September to late April, at least. He has 2 parents, and 2 siblings - EVEN IF I was inclined to do this for him (to pay the outrageous costs, to schlep him to the arena and have him miss sleep at his age, to spend MY time freezing in a cold and smelly arena - which, let me assure you, I'm not), there's just no way I can make his sister and his younger brother sacrifice THIER mornings and weekends in service of HIS sport. And there are no hockey teams that don't require this within a 30km radius, so: have fun, kid, there are some local kids at the outdoor rink, I'll buy you a helmet and a hockey stick, have fun. But you're not joining a team.
Ros, it is such a bummer when certain sports are only available in this extreme club form--we're having the same problem with water polo, which my son wants to try. Even with just one kid, I can't see how we go to far flung practices 3x/week and give up every saturday.
Weirdly because we're in LA, hockey for young kids isn't common so they try to make it attractive, at least at beginner levels, with fairly low commitment. But I'm from Minnesota, so I get the deep, super young, hockey culture you're facing.