The Hidden Costs of Youth Sports
With David French
May 18, 2024
Curtis Chang and David French delve into the multifaceted impact of youth sports culture on both parents and children. They explore how it demands our time, influences our social status, can strain our finances, and even affects our spiritual well-being. Listen as they uncover the hidden costs of turning what used to be play into a semi-professional lifestyle and discuss practical steps we can take to reclaim balance and well-being for our families.
Bring The After Party course to your church or small group!
Subscribers to Redeeming Babel will receive a discount on all Redeeming Babel courses, a monthly newsletter, and exclusive access to member only forums.
This latest episode brings back memories of my old church and the difficult transition from high school-college group ministry to the “young marrieds” level in Sunday School.
The one thing my wife and I noticed almost immediately was that the close knit community we had enjoyed through the previous 8 years disappeared overnight. All priorities of church community were replaced by the career/kids crush. People who were dedicated friends and church family members split off in a million isolated directions as they struggled with the new reality of trying to make it in the world.
Much of the results were tragic. We experienced a rash of divorces as the newly alone families couldn’t cope without their traditional support community. Those that stayed turned into nothing more than “attendees” that checked their “church” box once a week and then headed back into the hurricane of life; alone, isolated and without the community that they had known all their life up to that point.
And the church did…nothing.
No one took into account the pressures of this new stage in life. If anything, the message was “suck it up”, “this is life”, etc.
My wife and I spent the next 6 years trying to bring people back together in intentional fellowship and community. Our efforts were met with thundering indifference. It seemed that everyone involved was so caught up in the standard narrative of money, kids and success that anything more than an hour on Sundays was simply out of the question.
So, it’s no surprise to me that the current generation is walking away. What we as their parents and grandparents have taught them is their need to fulfill belonging and participating in community can be better found on the sidelines of a kids soccer game or an anti-Israel protest on the college quad than in a church sanctuary for an hour on a Sunday.
If we really want to find solutions to the great de-churching, I think we best start by looking in the mirror and accept our own responsibility for this mess we’re in.
BTW – my wife and I are both born again Christians and have not been able to find a fellowship for over 20 years. Not for a lack of trying.
Shalom
I really enjoyed this podcast and appreciate the commentary. I am a grandparent of two grandchildren. A girl at 8 and a boy at 6. We live within 7 miles of each other, so we have regular contact and are supportive of their spiritual and athletic abilities, etc. It would have been good to hear some commentary of grandparent involvement in all their activities. After all we learned a thing or two from raising two daughters. Thank you!
This topic was a refreshing change of pace for this podcast, but also sobering. Much of this resonated with me; we raised three children, all in their 20’s now, and navigated the sports world heavily with two of them. We mostly avoided the extreme travel, because they went to a small school– but that meant playing 3-4 sports each through high school (you can’t play AAU after basketball season if you are moving on to baseball. . . . ). Even with that, though, our world definitely revolved around the current season’s schedule. As I look back, I am grateful that they still managed to come out of it without a sense of self importance. I think we were aware of some of the pitfalls and worked to counteract those. However, there was definitely a high cost, which is more apparent now as I look back. Since sports schedules ruled our calendars and wallets, there was not time or money to develop other, more mutual, family activities and hobbies. So as adults now, we don’t have memories of the “family ski trip” or “family game nights” or “annual trip to the pumpkin patch” or whatever, to draw us into regular connection. If your main “family” activity consists of watching your kid(s) on the field, then when the “field” goes away, so does the family activity. This is sobering and I hope young families are being made aware so that, as you suggested, they can be more intentional with these choices.
This discussion also provided a light bulb moment for me. With as much thought as I have given this subject, it hasn’t really sunk in, how much kid sports have contributed to our own lack of community. As someone else mentioned, the kinds of friendships that last through decades, have eluded us. It makes so much sense that this is one big reason for this. Perhaps seeing other parents at games, felt like “enough” at the time. Clearly, it was not, as we find ourselves at 60 ish, without much in the way of community. In many conversations, we (along with others) have lamented how hard it is to make friends once your kids are grown, because friendships often form around your kids and their activities/ friends. Now I’m seeing the flaw in that thinking. . . . . . .
I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. As a parent of two daughters, now college-age, my husband and I experienced everything that David and Curtis described related to youth sports. Naturally athletic (although not part of that top, top tier), both our girls played soccer and basketball from young ages through high school. When they were younger, we always made decisions about their sports involvement based first upon our family’s commitment to our church life. For example, waiting to join the city youth soccer league until they were a bit older as the younger league played on Wednesday evenings which conflicted with AWANA at our church. However, as they grew older the pressure around involving them in travel leagues which interfered with church and youth group heightened. We held off allowing our oldest to join a travel league until her first year of high school, being told that if she didn’t play on a travel team, her chances of making the school team would be next to none. We were involved for one year in a travel soccer league and it completely dominated our family life! While we did not often have to miss church on Sundays, there were occasional weekends where we did. I distinctly remember that church came up among a group of parents at one of the Sunday games. We live in CA so church attendance is not the social norm like it is in other places around the country. One of the parents jokingly declared, “Church? We worship the soccer god!”. That made me cringe. Both girls played basketball on their high school teams even though we didn’t participate in travel ball. We continued to make family and church a priority even when and if it meant our girls were benched for occasionally missing practice. The “punishment” went beyond being benched however. One coach was particularly annoyed by this and harassed our daughter endlessly. It was really shocking and frankly awful. If she hadn’t loved playing so much, we would have pulled her out. I don’t know the answer either, but it was so refreshing to listen to you both “begin the conversation” about this. It’s no small issue for believers today and we need to support each other.