Comment by 1shooner
2 days ago
>The demands on kids and families
I'd like to understand this more. Families like this that I know talk about it as though it's as unavoidable as their mortgage, but functionally isn't this entirely self-imposed? Is it a lack of vision for an alternative? Are whole families succumbing to peer pressure? I don't relate to it.
We only have a 3 year old and a baby, but my wife and I have already argued a bit about this. She's all in on the sports train - it was a large part of her life growing up for her and her siblings. I, on the other hand, did a lot with my free time as a kid/teen.
I think part of the problem is that for people like her they can't imagine their kids not being in all sorts of sports, but they don't realize just how much the time commitment has ballooned. By the time it's too late they're all in and they're effectively in a sports sunk cost fallacy.
There is a happy medium between the "hotels every other weekend year round" travel/club sports and no sports, which is sports for your school or community teams. If I ever have kids I absolutely want to enroll them in sports. It will absolutely not be the travel/club teams that means us going to hotels every other weekend. I am probably naïve in thinking that it is possible to play for your high school without club sports, but I won't be traveling 10 hours by car for a U8 baseball tournament.
Apparently in our school you straight up won't be able to play in the regular school teams unless you do the travel teams starting in elementary school, because everyone else does it. Therefore, your child won't be as good as them unless they're an absolute savant at the sport.
They'll still get to be on the team, but actually playing? Probably not.
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Having two teenage daughters who are athletes, much of this will play out for them depending on how much they really love the sport and whether they are able to play it at the highest levels. If you listen and observe your kids, you'll get a good sense of what THEY want out of the sport. Support them in THEIR journey.
And remember at the end of the day, the most important aspects of being an athlete aren't one's performance on the field. It's everything else - learning to be committed to a team, forming life-long friendships, building positive memories, living a healthy lifestyle, etc.
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From talking to many parents they want to give them activities so their kids aren’t bored or sitting inside on their phones all day. Sports is one of those things and lets them also be with other kids.
The problem is kids being bored can be a good thing but they are never allowed to be. When I was a kid the internet didn’t even exist let alone cell phones and the only rule was “be home before sundown”. Kids now have way too many distractions and structure and are never given the ability to explore their own world on their own. It’s been manufactured for them.
I grew up before the Internet. Boring kids just watched endless garbage cable TV before the Internet. I'm not sure which is worse; maybe neither; they are each bad in their own way.
And then, when the kid finally has a few minutes of downtime, of course they're utterly drained and just looking for quick easy entertainment, and flick through a few videos on tiktok or YT shorts, with no time for discovering and indulging in deeper interests.
I can't stress this enough to new or soon to be parents.
Hold off on giving your child a phone as long as possible. Once your kids are old enough (your choice...but it's before they are teens), send them outside, shut the door, and go about your business.
Tell them to come back for lunch. Then send them outside again and tell them to come back for dinner.
I mean this in all sincerity. Don't plan their day for them. Make them go out and plan their day on the fly. Friend's house a mile away? Walk over and see if they can come out and play. Not home? Oh well, walk back or head to a different friend's house. There is value in this friction.
Don't be the person who gives your child a frictionless youth. The hard way is the best way.
I agree with this sentiment, but there have been cases of families who have had CPS called on them for letting their kids walk home alone from a nearby park [1]. It's frustrating to know that neighbors, schools, or authorities might interpret normal childhood independence as neglect and report parents to authorities.
[1] https://archive.ph/ZISnH
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cultural norms in the US have shifted so much that this becomes impractical. The parents of the friend you just went to are not expecting that behavior.
It’s different now if the other kids aren’t also outside.
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>The problem is kids being bored can be a good thing but they are never allowed to be
It's not like they'd have a chance to get creatively bored without the (physical) activities. Instead, if they're like most teens, they'd dopamine-junkie rot with their smartphone or game console.
exactly that’s how I describe it as well, this world is highly manufactured. If you opt out you are mostly alone so this also serves as a kind of social circle
If you let kids today "explore their own world" they'll just end up glued to phones.
Not if you limit their screen time and have reasonable limits on extracurriculars.
My son is starting 1st grade this fall, has been at same school since he was 3 and it goes through high school so, these are and will be his peers and it starts as major FOMO/it's the main way kids socialize outside of school hours. Good way to burn off their energies, etc. But it's also, they're young, we want to expose them to everything, they can find their "thing", etc. He does tons of non-Athletic stuff too (STEM, art, music, etc). So we've been playing soccer, baseball, flag football, basketball, lacrosse, swimming, etc. the last few years. It's getting to the point where some kids dropped a few sports based on disinterest or parent's inability to keep the schedule. We have one kid so really no excuses for us, but some people with multiple kids doing this is a scheduling nightmare. Anyways, what's already started to happen is we've brought in hired coaches. In no time, they'll be club/select league aged and people will faction off to do that. When it does, it will feel like gravity/inertia to do the same. Once you do, if you skip a beat, your kid is basically giving up the sport. They can't just join the baseball team in middle school, they won't make the cut against kids that have been playing non-stop since they were <6.
It is their entire friend group and becomes their identity. It would be hard to intentionally tell my son "you're not playing sports anymore". He may come to that conclusion on his own or coaches may cut him at some point; that's life. But, for those that stay active in it, the inertia of it is strong.
> It is their entire friend group and becomes their identity.
This sounds horrific. I did little leagues, grew bored (and nearsighted), randomly played outside for hours, did videogames (sometimes obsessively), built "forts" inside and out, went to / hosted parties, got into trouble, made amends (usually), family vacations, etc. Over identifying with groups and things seems crazy to me.
Maybe I'm overcompensating for my parent's (and at times my own) religious fervor. So much emotional investment seems unhinged.
Hopefully my kids can learn to enjoy their childhood. There will be plenty of time for serious commitments when they're adults.
> So we've been playing soccer, baseball, flag football, basketball, lacrosse, swimming, etc. the last few years
Swimming is great. USA Swimming has a well-developed system. Elite kids get sorted into the serious clubs where they swim with Olympic champions, etc. But the vast majority of the clubs are rec level and focus on getting lots of people swimming and having fun. Everyone gets a USA Swimming ID number and times are entered into the national system; they get tracked no matter what. Late developers can still be sucked into the elite system if they earn it. Your local park district swim club most likely is in a conference where they compete against other park districts in your county. The only problem is that there are so many kids and races that a meet probably lasts 5 hours.
Soccer is likely to get better. MLS and NWSL teams are developing their youth training systems like in Europe, with success as young kids going through these systems are playing professionally in North America and Europe. They are going to keep sucking the air out of the "elite travel soccer" scam and hopefully what is left are the fun clubs for the kids.
Baseball is likely to get worse. MLB took over the baseball minor leagues and reduced the number of teams. With fewer professional spots available, the "elite" clubs are more and more important to getting kids into them.
Basketball and football, same deal. Lacrosse? Universities couldn't care less about it anymore. It's a dead sport, many parents haven't figured it out yet.
In my hyperlocal area, lacrosse is pretty serious. There's a lot of private schools that fuel it. And, football is our main sport in terms of popularity but a lot of parents are afraid of injuries and don't allow it so lacrosse fills that void. The NFL driving flag football has been interesting to witness, the kids love it and it's fun to watch. I think it could get pretty popular.
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I would remark that Lou Gehrig was a soccer player in his youth, and supposedly had to be harassed into taking up baseball when in high school.
Not likely to happen today, anything is possible but just not very likely
I think a lot of families are also optimizing for university admissions. Strong athletes often have an easier time with admissions (assuming they're also good academically).
I remember having an interview with an engineering professor from Tufts when I was applying to schools, and one of the first things he asked me was what team sports I played. Being a typical nerdy kid I avoided athletics -- even though I was good at them -- and was surprised that he was so adamant about team sports. I didn't even take gym class after 9th grade because I figured out how to get an exemption, which, looking back at it, probably made my college applications weaker.
This was in 2001, and I can only imagine it's gotten worse.
When my son was in high school, the whole college application business astonished me--somebody a couple of years ahead of him applied to 18 schools.
The formula that I eventually arrived at is that the college application process is a punishment of the middle and upper middle classes for aspiring to the perquisites of its betters.
Very well put. So many things about the process are set up to favor the continuity of privilege in plausibly deniable ways. Athletics, service, alumni interviews, letters of reference; everything is easier if you’re wealthy and well connected.
Exactly. My daughter was able to get admitted to a good college as a recruited athlete, which helped compensate for mediocre grades. Regardless of the financial issues, that made the entire college applications process much easier and less stressful.
Ohh university admission another manufactured scam.
From what I observed about these club hockey players I saw growing up, mainly the kid loves it and made it into their identity. So the parents are probably feeling pretty forced into paying for it. That being said every family I knew doing this sort of thing could easily pay for it.
Often the kids do enjoy it, but I see a lot of essentially "pay to play" - your 10-yr-old playing tier 8 basketball shouldn't be going to out of town tournaments regularly, but club & private is big business and they push an NBA experience of travel, tourneys and gear - with the associated costs.
I mean aren't there also jockeying for college opportunities through school athleticism, and also a culture of over-competitive parents using their children's sports to posture against one another?
For this kid not really. He was always going to work for his dads company so for him the purpose of college was joining a fraternity and partying. I’m sure a number of people on that team felt the same way as it was quite costly and demanded a certain amount of disposable income from the family, which from what I’ve seen leads to a certain loss of ambition from the kids who see themselves as set early.
check out this article (gift link) from yesterday about private equity in youth sports
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/business/youth-sports-pri...
> For many families, the money they spend on sports is an investment in their child’s future. Roughly two in 10 youth sports parents think their child has the ability to play Division I college sports, and one in 10 thinks his or her child could reach the professional ranks or the Olympics, according to the Aspen Institute survey.
> one in 10 thinks his or her child could reach the professional ranks or the Olympics
That is properly insane. The delusion…
Agreed. For anyone thinking the above comment might be mean spirited, here's why it's not:
* In 2017, there were ~1,108,400 US high school football players.
* In 2017, there were ~67,800 US college football players.
* In 2017, 255 players were drafted into the NFL.
So from high school to playing in the NFL, odds of 0.023%, or about 1:4346.
Even then, the average tenure of a professional NFL player is 39 months.
--
Football is one of the easier sports to go pro in as well.
I noticed a lot of (upper-middleclass) parents (moms) fear that any none organized activity results 100% in their kid sitting on their phone/computer (they are not wrong on this point).
Rather than restricting screen time, admittedly not an easy battle (stating how it is, not how it should be), they outsource/circumvent that through organized activity.
Then there is the "competitive" nature. Can't have our kid just goofing around, (and I know the next bit is a bit exagerated and sarcastic, but often not untrue), I need the wins for my fantastic parent Facebook posts.
Lastly, non organized means unsupervised. Parents, I think especially in the US, are (thaught to) regard the world as a dangerzone for kids. Hanging around without oversight or protection, it is just time before they will surely get abducted, mugged, raped or murdered. Is this pure paranoia, or a media fueled self fulfilling prophecy? Can you blame parents for being overly protective for their (often only) child?
The pressure to get into college starts before birth. A 4.0 grade average isn’t good enough anymore.
To get into the very top schools, but to get a good education it's vastly more than enough.
Honestly, to the California State University and University of California system high school GPA doesn't matter at all. All you have to do is two years at a California Community College and do well there and you'll have your pick of which CSU or UC to transfer to.
Narcissist parents competing with other narcissist parents to be the best parents in the universe. Social media caters to their twisted world view where everyone is living a polished life of perfection so why not them and their perfect high-success family.
yeah but they don’t know that competition is for losers, you compete away all the profits while PE firms laugh all the way to the bank.
's/narcissist/desperately insecure/', perhaps? To a lot of Americans, the future really doesn't look so good if you fall out of the top 10%...1%...0.1%...
Do sports help in a bleak future world? I think if people really believed that, they'd focus more on the kid's practical skills.
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Narcissists are fundamentally insecure people. They have a self-esteem entirely driven by outside perception so they engage in behaviors to get external validation.
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