Bill Doherty on Youth Sports

I've long been interested in the work of William Doherty, a professor in the University of Minnesota's department of family social science. His name surfaces periodically in news stories about helicopter parents, the family dinner hour, and children's sports.

Well, all of the hockey mom references of late prompted Doherty to write a cogent op-ed in last Friday's Star Tribune called Mom and Pop Go Over the Top. In it, Doherty reminds us that up until the 1980s, children's sports were primarily child-run and neighborhood-based, without parents watching or coaching. It wasn't until high school that sports generally got organized.

He traces this change in part to the rise of very young Olympic stars like Nadia Comaneci and the general increase in sports stardom, with figures like Michael Jordan. Parents, he says, see someone like Tiger Woods, who was groomed for sports stardom from a young age, and want that for their children, too.

Doherty points out that this diversion of parental energy to sports has left other important social institutions in the dust (two he mentions are family dinners and the PTA). He writes,

It's ironic that parents who would never miss an athletic event often overlook what research and common sense attest are the most important activities that parents do with their children, things like having meals with them and quietly reading to them. One national study found that young children's academic success and psychological well-being were far more strongly influenced by time spent eating meals with parents than by time spent doing anything else, including extracurricular activities.

I have an acquaintance who should probably read some of the studies Doherty references. This friend's son was on a traveling baseball team all summer, with the family spending not just time but substantial money on gas and hotel rooms. Is he especially gifted, maybe the next A-Rod? No, his dad said. He's pretty average.

Now the boy is on a football team that goes to tournaments in other cities and will soon play in the Metrodome. And as soon as that round of games ends, basketball season starts.

How old is this boy?

Fifth grade.

And each of these teams of average players has a professional coach and a million pounds of parental energy feeding into it.

Gee, maybe we could solve both global warming and poor student achievement in one fell swoop by getting rid of traveling teams -- not just by using less gas, but by saving more human energy for something that actually matters, whether family dinners or getting involved in environmental change.

Does a kid really learn much more about either teamwork in general or the specific sport by playing on a traveling team versus a local team, versus even a pickup game in the neighborhood? I grew up playing kickball and softball in my neighborhood on improvised fields, as well as a bit more formal games in gym class. I remember that Peewee Football was just getting started when I was in fifth grade; Little League, of course, was already in existence, but T-ball was nowhere in sight yet.

The change happened gradually between the mid-70s when I was in high school and 1990. Oddly, it happened at the same time that much larger numbers of mothers were in the workforce. Probably the idea was that these outside activities would take the place of an adult being home with the kids, but it actually just led to lots of driving the kids around and following them to games.

I wonder how many parents would be glad to get off the crazy sports bandwagon if someone just canceled it all of a sudden.

Maybe we need a World War II-style poster campaign to point out the absurdity of it all.