Totally agree. The Youth Sports Industrial Complex also hinders community-building for even those whose kids aren't participating—because it feels like no one else is ever free on weekends or after school!
I really do miss my kids' rec league days, and it's sad that those are being cannibalized by the for-profit clubs, etc.
I also find that diet/fitness culture can be another layer fueling the emphasis on sports for some families (in addition to the college piece, as you so clearly lay out).
this is sad but definitely the reality in some places. depending on where you live, you may really have to seek out people who are taking a lower key approach.
When my son was in kindergarten I asked a mom for a playdate, I'd pick her son up with mine and they could play at our house until dinner. The mom said she might run late driving her 3 other sons to various sports and I said that's ok he can eat with us too if that helps you. The boy was THRILLED. Kept saying that everyday after kindergarten he spent hours driving to various activities and they usually ate fast food in the car for dinner and this was GREAT playing Legos at our house and eating dinner at a table. The family moved after that year to a district with a better football team. I used to wonder what happened to them all. Their lives seemed miserable to me
At FOUR years old. This is bonkers IMO. I'm sort of glad I'm not the only one having this problem where it's hard to make preschool friends because everyone, including the families with a stay-at-home parent, is scheduled in structured activities up to their eyebrows.
I was a gymnast is Texas in the late 90s and by the time I was 8, I was working out 20 hours a week plus competitions (and double work outs in summer). When I had kids, I knew full stop they weren't doing youth sports. We ride bikes, we ski, we play for ages at forest preserves, they spend hours at home just playing. I tell other parents this constantly. They need free time. People will be like but what if they want to do hockey ? You say no. But they'll stay home and stare at screens all day. And again. You say no. It's not that hard. And my kids are so brilliant and creative and active and good at communication and love reading more than any other kids I know. One of the best ways I've found to find fellow unscheduled kids is hang out at the playground right after school. Who isn't rushing off to practice? Those are your people.
This is such a good point, and something we experience all the time. We have a strict one sport at a time rule in our family (I have 4 kids). My kids probably are home more than others and many times when they knock on the neighbor friend’s door they aren’t around. Especially on weekends. Forget about a Saturday play date.
Thank you for this! I lost friends to the sports doom loop. Heard on the grapevine about one former friend who was devastated when her high school son got one too many concussions and could no longer play soccer per the doctor's orders. Their whole life was travel team soccer from elementary school to sophomore year. Had another old friend who lived in another state from me who spiraled into a serious depression when her kid went away to college and there was no more football to hyper focus on. She didn't know what to do with herself. I think parents of younger kids don't always think through what their lives will look like when their kids graduate high school. You need to maintain your own interests, your marital relationship and your friends so you don't put all your eggs in one basket and make your kid responsible for your happiness.
Jay, can we have this conversation, about how this doom loop might be driven by an unspoken fantasy held by the parent(s)? Like a dad who wants to win vicariously through his child, or the way moms of pro athletes are venerated for their sacrifice in service of their child’s future success?
That's a good point I hadn't considered! I'm not a sports kinda person and neither is my husband so that wasn't on my radar, parents unfulfilled dreams. I was thinking more keeping up with the Joneses or they delusionally thinking the kid would get a free ride for college
Same for my husband and me. But when I told my husband about this piece, he brought up this idea that parents with sports backgrounds could believe that their genes (and the natural talent thereof) combined with giving their kids every opportunity with these expensive competitive leagues, could result in their children succeeding to the degree they were unable to when they were playing. To be fair, idk how many parents I know who do this for their kids truly believe it’ll lead to pro sports careers, but an interesting theory I think.
So many thoughts, but the one I want to share is: Is our culture of pernicious productivity spreading to how we raise our kids? Have we accepted that childhood is “best” spent in structured activities? It sounds obvious when I write it out 😅
Or even the idea that we can’t love something (like basketball, like knitting, like playing video games) without getting something out of loving that something. What an unhealthy frame of mind
Yes! The most freeing discovery of my adult life has been learning I can enjoy something and consistently participate even if I am bad at it! Yoga, for example 😂
I volunteer to run a free"Splash Day" event at my neighborhood park twice a summer and there is nothing more fun than seeing a bunch of city kids running through sprinklers. The best part is when they realize they can fill up the bins that hold all the supplies and make their own "pools". Less Soccer Shots, more sprinklers!
I have this conversation with my husband all the time. He gets so irritable with our kids for playing video games when they could be “learning something” and I say they deserve to have leisure time too! We don’t have to be productive every moment of the day! And a Lego game made my kid a Star Wars fan so I have enjoyed that aspect.
Yeah, totally! I can so see the parallels between adults who feel pushed to monetize their hobbies and kids who are compelled to do the same. But there is inherent value in simply… having a hobby 😅
I suspect it has a lot to do with how we build cities, as well. We lost the culture of kids having some autonomy to play outside and people live further away from the elements of their lives in large part to society prioritizing wide streets with fast travel speeds.
Exactly, kids can’t just wander outside and find someone to play with, because cars make it unsafe. Plus we’re “bad” parents if we resort to screens. So structured activities fill those gaps to keep kids occupied.
i definitely get freaked out by cars and people driving too fast and looking at their phones. however, i think cars might be a boogeyman for other kinds of anxieties we have about kids roaming free. namely, if no one else lets their kid do it, it feels less safe and also drivers aren't looking for kids on the road. Let Grow has some great resrouces and thoughts on this.. i wrote about it a year ago so so.. https://thedoubleshift.substack.com/p/i-think-im-becoming-a-free-range
I can see this being true. We live in a neighborhood that has a large park, but it’s also right by the entrance of the neighborhood, which is just off a major thoroughfare (posted speed limit is 45, but it’s not unusual to get cars going 60+). Predictably, many people turning off the main road and into our neighborhood (and driving right by the park) are going much faster than what’s safe.
This is such a brilliant take and you've laid it out with such detail. Thank you, Katherine! Parents need to hear this! I'm also on this crusade to help parents get out of the kid activity doom loop. As you say, it can completely undermine time for adult community building. It also really eats into the free time kids once had to play and daydream and figure out who they are, which I'm convinced is a big part of why so many young people are struggling with mental health and independence. Kids don't need more time in adult-led activities (especially for-profit activities!) They need less.
yes! I have so much concern about the lack of free/flexible/dreamy time for kids. Mine are already at school 8-5 most day (afterschool program while both parents work so we can pay our bills). I do not want more in my life (though I loved middle school & high school sports for myself).
One fantastic, often overlooked aspect of afterschool care is that it usually allows lots of free play with other kids, something often lacking in kids’ lives these days. Don’t discount what they’re likely getting from that! 🙂
love our aftercare program for this reason. It's basically an unstructured play club. However, it now does a LOTTERY bc there aren't enough spots for all the families who need it. I do know people who don't get in often feel like structured programs are the only other option.
Now that's ridiculous and such a glaring example of how we don't prioritize care in this country. Good aftercare programs are such a simple solution for all involved--but we have to FUND them!
Agree, my daughter is in a super bare bones after school program where they spend most of the time outside on the playground and it’s been so good for her! The families who don’t do after school programs in our town tend to sign their kids up for a different activity every day and spend their time shuttling them around.
I completely agree with everything you say here. I’m British and moved here 9 years ago (USA California) and could immediately see the hyper focus on kids sports. Something we just don’t have in the UK. I think all the reasons for parents signing their kids up for kids sports that you mentioned are spot onWe’ve really struggled to have friends over and unstructured play and socialising with my 13 year old son as all his friends are doing so many sports. They don’t come to his parties because of a game. And these are good friends to him. I was so upset first time it happened and kind of furious with the parents. Parties and play and socialising are so important for kids they should always come before a game in my view. And the money these teams charge !!! It’s daylight robbery. My son loves soccer so much but he’s not super talented and has never made a comp team. Every time I rejoice and we go back to enjoying rec!!.
The hierachy that the sport is more important than anything i think can be very socially damaging for everyone. it's good to be commited, work hard, etc i think there's a larger question parents need to ask about what kind of childhood they want for their kids. i will talk about how to challenge some of these norms next week!
Sports is not better than all the other messy muddled paths our kids might take. I live in a really nice safe walkable neighbourhood and I feel so sad my kids have not had neighbourhood friends to hang out on street corners with getting up to mild mischief and and just hanging out together. No one is available . They all go have a million commitments
Thank you so much for articulating this. As a childless adult desperately looking for community, I just lamented to my therapist that my age demographic is utterly missing from any clubs, organizations, or events I try to pursue - it’s almost exclusively retirees or recent college grads (and I’m decidedly neither). My cohort are hanging out shuttling their children to their myriad activities and are absent from anything not kids’ activities.
I’ve been under the impression that everyone with kids is out there making friends and enjoying their lives without me, but this is helpful perspective for me that many parents feel just as trapped and excluded as I feel in this stage of life, although for every different reasons.
Even if we aren't stuck at kid's activities, a lot of social activities are organized in ways that are hard for parents to attend, especially if children are an unwelcome presence. As someone who has been the "parent of young children" voice in organizational meetings, the solution is almost always that parents should try harder. No change in communication, outreach, leadership development, policies, timing, etc.
Oh, please don’t misunderstand me! I’m a childless adult but I absolutely recognize all of the ways that this country claims to love children but does not support that in any way through infrastructure or expectations or anything. If you are an American raising children at this moment in history you are doing brave, under-resourced, unsupported work.
And also I just assumed ya’ll were all making friends and commiserating with the parents of your kids’ teammates, classmates, and acquaintances. It would seem I was mistaken.
Sorry, I didn't take it as a criticism at all! You are right that there is definitely a discouraging age gap in community organizations. I don't know if it being so hard to break into community support makes it easier to go all in on kid activities or what. Often, I'm not sure how people who work full-time and have no kids participate without teleporting or needing to eat. It is a lonely era.
“It is a lonely era”. <—— this. It would appear none of us are thriving.
On the one hand it makes me feel less broken, because if none of us are succeeding at this it’s not just my personal inability to find community. On the other hand - it would seem that’s a massive red flag for where we all find ourselves…cheers to anyone out there still trying to do the work to build a thing it seems we all need.
1. My husband is a coach for my oldests baseball team and has actually found a “dad” group of friends, which I find really interesting, because I have always found it weird (also I am totally speaking as a cis-het woman married to a cis-het man) that I have like, 3 mom text threads and many dads have none. There’s a total lack of dad support and I like that sports has kind of generated that? **although it wasn’t intentional and took a few years
2. I run a fitness/parenting conmunity outside of Philly. We host a weekly “open play” for kiddos to come and play, and it’s honestly a struggle to get peoples buy in on the unstructured-ness of it all. They don’t see (yet) the value in just coming to hang out.
3. We did a travel sport this spring and I really hated it. So much driving/time away/ splitting kids up.
> it’s honestly a struggle to get peoples buy in on the unstructured-ness of it all. They don’t see (yet) the value in just coming to hang out
Same. I feel like I have to do a sort of bait-and-switch sometimes planning homeschool co-op classes, where I plan something that sounds super academic (so people feel like they're going to get Value out of it) but intentionally leave a bunch of time for free play (so we get the unstructured friendship building time our family actually needs).
I aspire to do the same with my Girl Scout troop. It's structured, we earn badges and go camping, but I try to build it lots of time for them to just play on the playground at the park or hang out in the woods. I'm lucky to have several friend-families that like to do unstructured family hanging out too.
As a father of two small children, your comment about lack of dad support hits home. My wife has multiple moms groups that get her out and socializing at least once a week. Haven't found any kind of analogue for me, and I'm looking forward to the sports years for that reason.
We’ve built a culture where kids’ lives are packed with organized activities, but mothers’ lives are stripped of real-world, multi-person engagement. From a neuroscience perspective, that’s a tragedy. Early motherhood is a period of heightened neuroplasticity — our brains are primed to learn faster, read people more precisely, and become master social connectors. But instead of being in adult-rich environments that strengthen these skills, we spend our hours on the sidelines of soccer fields, cut off from the very networks our brains need to grow.
And here’s the kicker: we lose not just skill, but our village.
A real village isn’t carpooling to sports complexes — it’s side-by-side adult life: cooking together, helping with a project, trading child care, solving problems in real time. When we reclaim those spaces, mothers thrive. And so do kids.
nailed it, esp this: "A real village isn’t carpooling to sports complexes — it’s side-by-side adult life: cooking together, helping with a project, trading child care, solving problems in real time."
That's very well said. I was talking to Katherine once about the co-parenting level friendships I have formed over the past decade and when she asked how we did built those relationships, all I could really think of was "we go camping together and hang out a lot" - which doesn't feel like very insightful advice - but that togetherness of camping and parenting in each others' presence built trust and camaraderie that now makes life so much better.
I'm super interested in this from a policy perspective. How do we combat the doom loop on a social level? Reinvest in community leagues and rec centers? Year-round school? What else?
investing in high quality, affordable after school and summer camps that aren't structured activities for people who can afford it would help! in a lot of places people sign their kids up for activities, because WTH are they going to do after 230 otherwise?
Invest in unstructured community spaces. I read an article recently about how breweries were rethinking their policy for allowing kids because they were so disruptive to the adult space (getting in the way of waiters, climbing things, peeing in in appropriate places, etc.). That made me think, what if there was a brewery and a childcare space combined? Kind of like at gyms sometimes. I would absolutely pay a membership fee for a place to hire a professional babysitter to watch my kid while he plays with other kids in a fun unstructured space while I got a drink with my friends neadby. This doesn't have to be alcohol centered either, just a way for adults and kids to coexist while both parties fulfill their interests.
My neighborhood has a very popular pizza place that has a large outdoor area. Part of it is seating and part of it is a play space for kids. There’s astroturf hills and a giant chalkboard. Families clearly LOVE it. It’s always mobbed. The kids get to run around and the parents get to actually enjoy their meal.
I think a piece of it is ending the expectation that your kid must excel at something and has to go to college. Trade schools are an incredible value and are an option for smart kids too.
most of the people who are investing a ton of time and money into kids extracurriculars kids can absolutely go to college. this is about a focus on "the right" college.
We’ve moved to Spain this year. We don’t have kids but I’ve noticed that in most big plazas, kids play, and there is usually a cafe nearby. Adults sit outside and socialize while kids run around. Of course the absence of cars makes this much safer! (Obviously there ARE cars, but more wide open public spaces which are beautiful and well-maintained.)
public space like this is super helpful. also not demonizing children in public spaces without a parent hovering over their every move is an important cultural piece.
I think it is more that it encourages people to stay in the parks, especially unhoused people. The same reason we don't have enough public restrooms. Also, you probably need more density/walkability than many suburban parks have. The larger park near us has a snack bar and could probably support a cafe, but it would probably need to be an outpost of a larger restaurant to be successful.
Funding for community level recreation has just been decimated where I live and I think that's a big part of it. I had to extract my daughter from a dance studio she loved because of the Doom Loop effect (more time, more money, less fun) I could see that it was going to become (love the term, Katherine, btw! ) but there is a real lack of dance/art/theater for kids in our community. I was looking in to starting a summer swim team for the public rec league in our region and the city just decided to close down our neighborhood pool so now that's out. Low-cost parks and rec camps at our parks being defunded too.
Yaaaassss! This is such an excellent articulation of what I call "the coachification of America." You hit so many key points: how these leagues hollow out the affordable, less intense local efforts; deprive communities of engagement from families that are too drained from sports logistics to host, attend or socialize; how it creates a competitive baseline. Now we need a catch phrase and movement to raise awareness about the Kids Activity Doom Loop. Just say no??
We recently made the decision to block out Friday nights and Saturday mornings for family time. It's been a shift - a lot goes on during those times - but it's also helped shape our week differently. We make exceptions when needed, and am feeling the pain point when this class or group is offered during those times. But in general, it's also given us the time together and given us a much needed break to relax!
Ever read an article in the main stream media about how kids could benefit from more unstructured and unsupervised play outside and then get the other perspective either in the comments or in the main discussion? It almost always goes like this: "I was a kid in the 1950's/60's and spent my childhood dodging child predators. And my friend/cousin/neighbor got seriously hurt doing something stupid. Stop thinking that letting your kids out unsupervised is a good idea." Another aspect of why we have all these sports is simply the pressure and shame from the grandparents. We dont have community as parents today because some bad actors terrorized a whole generation of kids decades ago and our society did little to protect them. We aren't going to be able to move away from our cultural obsession with structured activities until we address the elephant in the room: we feel our kids are safest this way.
We are a sports family. We have spent the $ and given up the time, but it has all been driven by our kids. They love to play and they love competing. We have given them the opportunity to make less intensive choices and they will choose the more competitive options because they want to push themselves. I can give up things for myself if it gives my kid an opportunity to prove to themselves what they are capable of.
This year my son decided to give up ice hockey. He was going into his last year and we asked him if he was sure. He said he wasn't having fun anymore and wanted to spend his time doing other things. So we said okay. I will miss watching him, but I am not putting him through something he isn't enjoying anymore.
As a middle school teacher this post resonates with me so much. Many of my students play one or more sports with demanding schedules, and they are often so tired and stressed out trying to balance the school responsibilities required by me and my colleagues and their extracurriculars. I also teach a population of students with learning differences, so they are already struggling with the executive functioning of managing it all. (The positive of course is that it can be an area of success and confidence for students that struggle academically, so I’d never want to take that away from them.)
I just wish our culture wasn’t so sports-focused and that there was more room for kids to explore lots of other things and be celebrated for other things, as well as time for free play and to, I will say, just sit with their own thoughts for a time and see what happens.
My name's Dr. Natasha, and I'm KADL survivor. :-) Lots to unpack in this great thought piece. Of course, my main concern for these young athletes is their physical and mental health. I see too much sports-related anxiety at very young ages, often directly caused by the Billion dollar youth sports industrial complex.
The adult community-building aspect is an interesting take. I've spent (hundreds?) of hours sharing a metal bench with sports team parents. Although we'd all like to say that these people are "friends," it only takes one team shake-up or coaching change to reveal the fleeting nature of our "bond." When it comes to the KADL, it's every man for themselves.
As the parent of three swimmers I can relate to so much of this! When we started it was two one hour practices a week, close to home. No problem! Fast forward and now we are at seven a week! And national meets. I had no clue what I was getting myself into. Luckily our team is small and the parent community is great. Luckily my kids drive themselves now but I still go to practice now and then so the swim moms and go out for a 🍸
Totally agree. The Youth Sports Industrial Complex also hinders community-building for even those whose kids aren't participating—because it feels like no one else is ever free on weekends or after school!
I really do miss my kids' rec league days, and it's sad that those are being cannibalized by the for-profit clubs, etc.
I also find that diet/fitness culture can be another layer fueling the emphasis on sports for some families (in addition to the college piece, as you so clearly lay out).
YES! I have such a hard time arranging play dates for my 4 year old because everyone is at soccer and gymnastics.
this is sad but definitely the reality in some places. depending on where you live, you may really have to seek out people who are taking a lower key approach.
When my son was in kindergarten I asked a mom for a playdate, I'd pick her son up with mine and they could play at our house until dinner. The mom said she might run late driving her 3 other sons to various sports and I said that's ok he can eat with us too if that helps you. The boy was THRILLED. Kept saying that everyday after kindergarten he spent hours driving to various activities and they usually ate fast food in the car for dinner and this was GREAT playing Legos at our house and eating dinner at a table. The family moved after that year to a district with a better football team. I used to wonder what happened to them all. Their lives seemed miserable to me
the cost of these commitments on the kids not participating is very real.
At FOUR years old. This is bonkers IMO. I'm sort of glad I'm not the only one having this problem where it's hard to make preschool friends because everyone, including the families with a stay-at-home parent, is scheduled in structured activities up to their eyebrows.
I was a gymnast is Texas in the late 90s and by the time I was 8, I was working out 20 hours a week plus competitions (and double work outs in summer). When I had kids, I knew full stop they weren't doing youth sports. We ride bikes, we ski, we play for ages at forest preserves, they spend hours at home just playing. I tell other parents this constantly. They need free time. People will be like but what if they want to do hockey ? You say no. But they'll stay home and stare at screens all day. And again. You say no. It's not that hard. And my kids are so brilliant and creative and active and good at communication and love reading more than any other kids I know. One of the best ways I've found to find fellow unscheduled kids is hang out at the playground right after school. Who isn't rushing off to practice? Those are your people.
thanks for sharing
This is such a good point, and something we experience all the time. We have a strict one sport at a time rule in our family (I have 4 kids). My kids probably are home more than others and many times when they knock on the neighbor friend’s door they aren’t around. Especially on weekends. Forget about a Saturday play date.
Thank you for this! I lost friends to the sports doom loop. Heard on the grapevine about one former friend who was devastated when her high school son got one too many concussions and could no longer play soccer per the doctor's orders. Their whole life was travel team soccer from elementary school to sophomore year. Had another old friend who lived in another state from me who spiraled into a serious depression when her kid went away to college and there was no more football to hyper focus on. She didn't know what to do with herself. I think parents of younger kids don't always think through what their lives will look like when their kids graduate high school. You need to maintain your own interests, your marital relationship and your friends so you don't put all your eggs in one basket and make your kid responsible for your happiness.
Jay, can we have this conversation, about how this doom loop might be driven by an unspoken fantasy held by the parent(s)? Like a dad who wants to win vicariously through his child, or the way moms of pro athletes are venerated for their sacrifice in service of their child’s future success?
i see a lot of parent ego driving this in my reporting
That's a good point I hadn't considered! I'm not a sports kinda person and neither is my husband so that wasn't on my radar, parents unfulfilled dreams. I was thinking more keeping up with the Joneses or they delusionally thinking the kid would get a free ride for college
Same for my husband and me. But when I told my husband about this piece, he brought up this idea that parents with sports backgrounds could believe that their genes (and the natural talent thereof) combined with giving their kids every opportunity with these expensive competitive leagues, could result in their children succeeding to the degree they were unable to when they were playing. To be fair, idk how many parents I know who do this for their kids truly believe it’ll lead to pro sports careers, but an interesting theory I think.
So many thoughts, but the one I want to share is: Is our culture of pernicious productivity spreading to how we raise our kids? Have we accepted that childhood is “best” spent in structured activities? It sounds obvious when I write it out 😅
I think yes, tbh. Why let them play in the sprinkler when they could be “learning” a skill or sport… is this thinking
Or even the idea that we can’t love something (like basketball, like knitting, like playing video games) without getting something out of loving that something. What an unhealthy frame of mind
Yes! The most freeing discovery of my adult life has been learning I can enjoy something and consistently participate even if I am bad at it! Yoga, for example 😂
Honestly that’s one of my goals this year: be ok with being bad at something, and even letting other people see I’m bad at it!!
starting as a beginner is great and humbling. I've done it this year with Mahjong and spanish.
I volunteer to run a free"Splash Day" event at my neighborhood park twice a summer and there is nothing more fun than seeing a bunch of city kids running through sprinklers. The best part is when they realize they can fill up the bins that hold all the supplies and make their own "pools". Less Soccer Shots, more sprinklers!
I have this conversation with my husband all the time. He gets so irritable with our kids for playing video games when they could be “learning something” and I say they deserve to have leisure time too! We don’t have to be productive every moment of the day! And a Lego game made my kid a Star Wars fan so I have enjoyed that aspect.
Yeah, totally! I can so see the parallels between adults who feel pushed to monetize their hobbies and kids who are compelled to do the same. But there is inherent value in simply… having a hobby 😅
exactly the same values at play here
I suspect it has a lot to do with how we build cities, as well. We lost the culture of kids having some autonomy to play outside and people live further away from the elements of their lives in large part to society prioritizing wide streets with fast travel speeds.
yes, not knowing and trusting neighbors, never seeing kids out playing also contributes, and design has a huge impact on this.
Exactly, kids can’t just wander outside and find someone to play with, because cars make it unsafe. Plus we’re “bad” parents if we resort to screens. So structured activities fill those gaps to keep kids occupied.
i definitely get freaked out by cars and people driving too fast and looking at their phones. however, i think cars might be a boogeyman for other kinds of anxieties we have about kids roaming free. namely, if no one else lets their kid do it, it feels less safe and also drivers aren't looking for kids on the road. Let Grow has some great resrouces and thoughts on this.. i wrote about it a year ago so so.. https://thedoubleshift.substack.com/p/i-think-im-becoming-a-free-range
I can see this being true. We live in a neighborhood that has a large park, but it’s also right by the entrance of the neighborhood, which is just off a major thoroughfare (posted speed limit is 45, but it’s not unusual to get cars going 60+). Predictably, many people turning off the main road and into our neighborhood (and driving right by the park) are going much faster than what’s safe.
This is such a brilliant take and you've laid it out with such detail. Thank you, Katherine! Parents need to hear this! I'm also on this crusade to help parents get out of the kid activity doom loop. As you say, it can completely undermine time for adult community building. It also really eats into the free time kids once had to play and daydream and figure out who they are, which I'm convinced is a big part of why so many young people are struggling with mental health and independence. Kids don't need more time in adult-led activities (especially for-profit activities!) They need less.
yes! I have so much concern about the lack of free/flexible/dreamy time for kids. Mine are already at school 8-5 most day (afterschool program while both parents work so we can pay our bills). I do not want more in my life (though I loved middle school & high school sports for myself).
One fantastic, often overlooked aspect of afterschool care is that it usually allows lots of free play with other kids, something often lacking in kids’ lives these days. Don’t discount what they’re likely getting from that! 🙂
love our aftercare program for this reason. It's basically an unstructured play club. However, it now does a LOTTERY bc there aren't enough spots for all the families who need it. I do know people who don't get in often feel like structured programs are the only other option.
Now that's ridiculous and such a glaring example of how we don't prioritize care in this country. Good aftercare programs are such a simple solution for all involved--but we have to FUND them!
Yeah, I wish more parents grasped the benefits of these low-key programs. They’re what kids really need and they’re easier on the parent!
Agree, my daughter is in a super bare bones after school program where they spend most of the time outside on the playground and it’s been so good for her! The families who don’t do after school programs in our town tend to sign their kids up for a different activity every day and spend their time shuttling them around.
I completely agree with everything you say here. I’m British and moved here 9 years ago (USA California) and could immediately see the hyper focus on kids sports. Something we just don’t have in the UK. I think all the reasons for parents signing their kids up for kids sports that you mentioned are spot onWe’ve really struggled to have friends over and unstructured play and socialising with my 13 year old son as all his friends are doing so many sports. They don’t come to his parties because of a game. And these are good friends to him. I was so upset first time it happened and kind of furious with the parents. Parties and play and socialising are so important for kids they should always come before a game in my view. And the money these teams charge !!! It’s daylight robbery. My son loves soccer so much but he’s not super talented and has never made a comp team. Every time I rejoice and we go back to enjoying rec!!.
The hierachy that the sport is more important than anything i think can be very socially damaging for everyone. it's good to be commited, work hard, etc i think there's a larger question parents need to ask about what kind of childhood they want for their kids. i will talk about how to challenge some of these norms next week!
Yes!!!!
Sports is not better than all the other messy muddled paths our kids might take. I live in a really nice safe walkable neighbourhood and I feel so sad my kids have not had neighbourhood friends to hang out on street corners with getting up to mild mischief and and just hanging out together. No one is available . They all go have a million commitments
Thank you so much for articulating this. As a childless adult desperately looking for community, I just lamented to my therapist that my age demographic is utterly missing from any clubs, organizations, or events I try to pursue - it’s almost exclusively retirees or recent college grads (and I’m decidedly neither). My cohort are hanging out shuttling their children to their myriad activities and are absent from anything not kids’ activities.
I’ve been under the impression that everyone with kids is out there making friends and enjoying their lives without me, but this is helpful perspective for me that many parents feel just as trapped and excluded as I feel in this stage of life, although for every different reasons.
the 30s and 40s cohort need real friends!!!
Even if we aren't stuck at kid's activities, a lot of social activities are organized in ways that are hard for parents to attend, especially if children are an unwelcome presence. As someone who has been the "parent of young children" voice in organizational meetings, the solution is almost always that parents should try harder. No change in communication, outreach, leadership development, policies, timing, etc.
Oh, please don’t misunderstand me! I’m a childless adult but I absolutely recognize all of the ways that this country claims to love children but does not support that in any way through infrastructure or expectations or anything. If you are an American raising children at this moment in history you are doing brave, under-resourced, unsupported work.
And also I just assumed ya’ll were all making friends and commiserating with the parents of your kids’ teammates, classmates, and acquaintances. It would seem I was mistaken.
Sorry, I didn't take it as a criticism at all! You are right that there is definitely a discouraging age gap in community organizations. I don't know if it being so hard to break into community support makes it easier to go all in on kid activities or what. Often, I'm not sure how people who work full-time and have no kids participate without teleporting or needing to eat. It is a lonely era.
“It is a lonely era”. <—— this. It would appear none of us are thriving.
On the one hand it makes me feel less broken, because if none of us are succeeding at this it’s not just my personal inability to find community. On the other hand - it would seem that’s a massive red flag for where we all find ourselves…cheers to anyone out there still trying to do the work to build a thing it seems we all need.
Hi!!! I have two comments:
1. My husband is a coach for my oldests baseball team and has actually found a “dad” group of friends, which I find really interesting, because I have always found it weird (also I am totally speaking as a cis-het woman married to a cis-het man) that I have like, 3 mom text threads and many dads have none. There’s a total lack of dad support and I like that sports has kind of generated that? **although it wasn’t intentional and took a few years
2. I run a fitness/parenting conmunity outside of Philly. We host a weekly “open play” for kiddos to come and play, and it’s honestly a struggle to get peoples buy in on the unstructured-ness of it all. They don’t see (yet) the value in just coming to hang out.
3. We did a travel sport this spring and I really hated it. So much driving/time away/ splitting kids up.
> it’s honestly a struggle to get peoples buy in on the unstructured-ness of it all. They don’t see (yet) the value in just coming to hang out
Same. I feel like I have to do a sort of bait-and-switch sometimes planning homeschool co-op classes, where I plan something that sounds super academic (so people feel like they're going to get Value out of it) but intentionally leave a bunch of time for free play (so we get the unstructured friendship building time our family actually needs).
I aspire to do the same with my Girl Scout troop. It's structured, we earn badges and go camping, but I try to build it lots of time for them to just play on the playground at the park or hang out in the woods. I'm lucky to have several friend-families that like to do unstructured family hanging out too.
Sike! That was 3 comments.
As a father of two small children, your comment about lack of dad support hits home. My wife has multiple moms groups that get her out and socializing at least once a week. Haven't found any kind of analogue for me, and I'm looking forward to the sports years for that reason.
This resonates deeply.
We’ve built a culture where kids’ lives are packed with organized activities, but mothers’ lives are stripped of real-world, multi-person engagement. From a neuroscience perspective, that’s a tragedy. Early motherhood is a period of heightened neuroplasticity — our brains are primed to learn faster, read people more precisely, and become master social connectors. But instead of being in adult-rich environments that strengthen these skills, we spend our hours on the sidelines of soccer fields, cut off from the very networks our brains need to grow.
And here’s the kicker: we lose not just skill, but our village.
A real village isn’t carpooling to sports complexes — it’s side-by-side adult life: cooking together, helping with a project, trading child care, solving problems in real time. When we reclaim those spaces, mothers thrive. And so do kids.
nailed it, esp this: "A real village isn’t carpooling to sports complexes — it’s side-by-side adult life: cooking together, helping with a project, trading child care, solving problems in real time."
That's very well said. I was talking to Katherine once about the co-parenting level friendships I have formed over the past decade and when she asked how we did built those relationships, all I could really think of was "we go camping together and hang out a lot" - which doesn't feel like very insightful advice - but that togetherness of camping and parenting in each others' presence built trust and camaraderie that now makes life so much better.
I'm super interested in this from a policy perspective. How do we combat the doom loop on a social level? Reinvest in community leagues and rec centers? Year-round school? What else?
investing in high quality, affordable after school and summer camps that aren't structured activities for people who can afford it would help! in a lot of places people sign their kids up for activities, because WTH are they going to do after 230 otherwise?
As a child if the 70’s, this is wild to read about. No one cared what the kids were up to, as long as they weren’t bothering the adults.
Invest in unstructured community spaces. I read an article recently about how breweries were rethinking their policy for allowing kids because they were so disruptive to the adult space (getting in the way of waiters, climbing things, peeing in in appropriate places, etc.). That made me think, what if there was a brewery and a childcare space combined? Kind of like at gyms sometimes. I would absolutely pay a membership fee for a place to hire a professional babysitter to watch my kid while he plays with other kids in a fun unstructured space while I got a drink with my friends neadby. This doesn't have to be alcohol centered either, just a way for adults and kids to coexist while both parties fulfill their interests.
My neighborhood has a very popular pizza place that has a large outdoor area. Part of it is seating and part of it is a play space for kids. There’s astroturf hills and a giant chalkboard. Families clearly LOVE it. It’s always mobbed. The kids get to run around and the parents get to actually enjoy their meal.
I think a piece of it is ending the expectation that your kid must excel at something and has to go to college. Trade schools are an incredible value and are an option for smart kids too.
most of the people who are investing a ton of time and money into kids extracurriculars kids can absolutely go to college. this is about a focus on "the right" college.
We’ve moved to Spain this year. We don’t have kids but I’ve noticed that in most big plazas, kids play, and there is usually a cafe nearby. Adults sit outside and socialize while kids run around. Of course the absence of cars makes this much safer! (Obviously there ARE cars, but more wide open public spaces which are beautiful and well-maintained.)
public space like this is super helpful. also not demonizing children in public spaces without a parent hovering over their every move is an important cultural piece.
We could put cafes in parks. Many cities around the world do. But I haven't seen many around here. Probably due to zoning issues.
I think it is more that it encourages people to stay in the parks, especially unhoused people. The same reason we don't have enough public restrooms. Also, you probably need more density/walkability than many suburban parks have. The larger park near us has a snack bar and could probably support a cafe, but it would probably need to be an outpost of a larger restaurant to be successful.
Funding for community level recreation has just been decimated where I live and I think that's a big part of it. I had to extract my daughter from a dance studio she loved because of the Doom Loop effect (more time, more money, less fun) I could see that it was going to become (love the term, Katherine, btw! ) but there is a real lack of dance/art/theater for kids in our community. I was looking in to starting a summer swim team for the public rec league in our region and the city just decided to close down our neighborhood pool so now that's out. Low-cost parks and rec camps at our parks being defunded too.
Yaaaassss! This is such an excellent articulation of what I call "the coachification of America." You hit so many key points: how these leagues hollow out the affordable, less intense local efforts; deprive communities of engagement from families that are too drained from sports logistics to host, attend or socialize; how it creates a competitive baseline. Now we need a catch phrase and movement to raise awareness about the Kids Activity Doom Loop. Just say no??
We recently made the decision to block out Friday nights and Saturday mornings for family time. It's been a shift - a lot goes on during those times - but it's also helped shape our week differently. We make exceptions when needed, and am feeling the pain point when this class or group is offered during those times. But in general, it's also given us the time together and given us a much needed break to relax!
You have invented Shabbat!
Ever read an article in the main stream media about how kids could benefit from more unstructured and unsupervised play outside and then get the other perspective either in the comments or in the main discussion? It almost always goes like this: "I was a kid in the 1950's/60's and spent my childhood dodging child predators. And my friend/cousin/neighbor got seriously hurt doing something stupid. Stop thinking that letting your kids out unsupervised is a good idea." Another aspect of why we have all these sports is simply the pressure and shame from the grandparents. We dont have community as parents today because some bad actors terrorized a whole generation of kids decades ago and our society did little to protect them. We aren't going to be able to move away from our cultural obsession with structured activities until we address the elephant in the room: we feel our kids are safest this way.
We are a sports family. We have spent the $ and given up the time, but it has all been driven by our kids. They love to play and they love competing. We have given them the opportunity to make less intensive choices and they will choose the more competitive options because they want to push themselves. I can give up things for myself if it gives my kid an opportunity to prove to themselves what they are capable of.
This year my son decided to give up ice hockey. He was going into his last year and we asked him if he was sure. He said he wasn't having fun anymore and wanted to spend his time doing other things. So we said okay. I will miss watching him, but I am not putting him through something he isn't enjoying anymore.
All this to say that there is a balance.
As a middle school teacher this post resonates with me so much. Many of my students play one or more sports with demanding schedules, and they are often so tired and stressed out trying to balance the school responsibilities required by me and my colleagues and their extracurriculars. I also teach a population of students with learning differences, so they are already struggling with the executive functioning of managing it all. (The positive of course is that it can be an area of success and confidence for students that struggle academically, so I’d never want to take that away from them.)
I just wish our culture wasn’t so sports-focused and that there was more room for kids to explore lots of other things and be celebrated for other things, as well as time for free play and to, I will say, just sit with their own thoughts for a time and see what happens.
Thanks for sharing this perspective
My name's Dr. Natasha, and I'm KADL survivor. :-) Lots to unpack in this great thought piece. Of course, my main concern for these young athletes is their physical and mental health. I see too much sports-related anxiety at very young ages, often directly caused by the Billion dollar youth sports industrial complex.
The adult community-building aspect is an interesting take. I've spent (hundreds?) of hours sharing a metal bench with sports team parents. Although we'd all like to say that these people are "friends," it only takes one team shake-up or coaching change to reveal the fleeting nature of our "bond." When it comes to the KADL, it's every man for themselves.
fantastic insights.. are you a survivor bc your kids quit sport or grew up?
I survived the KADL --my daughter is now a college athlete. So, still in the stands but at a new "community" level.
As the parent of three swimmers I can relate to so much of this! When we started it was two one hour practices a week, close to home. No problem! Fast forward and now we are at seven a week! And national meets. I had no clue what I was getting myself into. Luckily our team is small and the parent community is great. Luckily my kids drive themselves now but I still go to practice now and then so the swim moms and go out for a 🍸
that one practice a week and then ramp up is totally how it starts!!