086: Playing to Win: How does playing sports impact children?

Jen: 01:23 Hello and welcome to today's episode of Your Parenting Mojo podcast, and today's episode actually comes to us courtesy of a question from my husband who said “You should really do an episode on the benefits of sports for children.” And I said, sure and I said about researching it and I actually stumbled on Dr. Hilary Levey Friedman’s book Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture, and I really got more than I bargained for with that book. Dr. Friedman has studied not just the advantages and drawbacks associated with participation in sport as an activity, but also much broader sociological issues like how participation in sports helped children to increase what she calls Competitive Kid Capital and can actually impact the child's academic and lifelong success. So, Dr. Friedman received her Bachelor's Degree from Harvard and Master’s in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University. She's currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Education at Brown University and is the mother of a preschooler and a first grader. Welcome Dr. Friedman. Dr. Friedman: 02:24 Thanks for having me. Jen: 02:25 You're right there in the thick of it with us. Dr. Friedman: 02:27 Yes. Jen: 02:29 So, I want to kind of start at the beginning or what seems like the beginning to me here because decades ago it seems as though it was far more common for children to engage in really unstructured outdoor playtime rather than organized sports. I'm curious as to your thoughts on what has shifted here and what do you think children are missing out by not having as much of this unstructured outdoor play? Dr. Friedman: 02:51 Well, it depends what time we're talking about. I mean if we’re talking about 200 years ago, I mean kids were working in the fields and 50 years after that, they were working in factories. So about a hundred years ago, 1918, we're seeing the formation of kids' athletic leagues in particular and also some other organized activities, but it's really more of like a popular myth or a misconception that kids use to spend all this time playing and having free time. The 1950s, which is that time we sort of pulled up is this Utopian time of kids playing in the streets and playing stickball and baseball and all of that is more the anomaly rather than the norm. So, today it is absolutely true that kids spend so much more time, especially, it depends on what age exactly we're talking about, but they spend a lot of time in organized play, not just in organized sports, but we just have to think about the ways in which that took a different shape historically in American childhood. Jen: 03:56 Yeah. Yeah. So, it's less that they were always able to engage in this unstructured play and whether that was sort of a phenomenon of its time just like the structured play as a phenomenon of its time today. Dr. Friedman: 04:07 Yes. Jen: 04:08 Do you think there are unique benefits associated with that unstructured time that maybe children are not able to realize today through the structured play that happens? Dr. Friedman: 04:17 Again, I think it depends on the age group we're talking about, so I'll limit it to elementary school aged kids just because that's the age group that Playing to Win focuses upon. So, I think certainly kids are working out all kinds of ideas, both intellectual but also social and moral when they play together and come up with their own games. Now, I don't think that having organized play is mutually exclusive to that either. So, I'll just give you one example in particular, part of Playing to Win is also about chess, not just about sports. And so I remember being at a chess summer camp for a few weeks and observing there and meeting families and the kids would play chess and then there'd be a recess time and then they'd play a little bit more chess and then have lunch and then have like a much longer period of recess and go out to a playground. And they came up with all these games that they invented on the playground and with pool noodles even though there wasn't a pool nearby and they had rules. It was very elaborate. So yes, they were spending time unstructured play as well, but they also had this space to be creative, workout rules, work together. So, I think it is possible for both of those things to coexist and both of those things are important for kids as well. Jen: 05:35 Oh, that's fascinating. In reading your book, I sort of had the impression that the kids were sort of locked up in a conference hall for 10 hours at a stretch playing chess. Dr. Friedman: 05:44 Well, sometimes at the tournaments it feels much more like that. But that's again not like the everyday experience of doing this. Jen: 05:53 Yeah. Okay. All right, so I'm curious because I think that this is where most of our minds go and certainly my husband's mind was going when he asked the question, what are some of the more immediate benefits for children participating in organized sporting activities? Dr. Friedman: 06:08 So, immediately obviously there is the physical fitness aspect, there's also the teamwork and those are things that you can get by just playing at school or playing recreationally. I think when you up it to the more competitive experience, that's when other lessons kick in as well. So, there's pretty much if you have to think about it, but there are very few sporting experiences where there's not some element of a time limit or some sense of time and rules you have to adhere to. So again, you can get that somewhat from doing it recreationally, but when you're doing it competitively and by that I mean it's organized, adults are running it and records are kept, then you get something much different out of that experience. Performing under pressure for example. Jen: 06:54 Yeah. Okay. So, we're not necessarily talking about elite levels of participation. This is your kid's little league is the same because adults are running it, they are providing the timekeeping and the score keeping and so the children are participating under some time pressure. Dr. Friedman: 07:10 You’re exactly correct. Yeah, I mean I think to be more specific, what I'm talking about here, when I say competitive is a league where you have to try out or not everybody is guaranteed a spot and that sort of thing. So most little league is, I would consider recreational, but if there's an all-star league or any of these what we call in the US travel teams that kids are not elite, they might have some dreams of becoming elite someday, but they certainly are not elite at this moment. Jen: 07:37 Right. Okay. So, there are a number of other sort of health benefits as well that I was reading about things like health and bone density, lower rates of obesity and cardiovascular disease and diabetes and these kinds of things as well. Do you see those as important benefits associated with a lot of different kinds of sporting activities as well as with unstructured playtime? Dr. Friedman: 07:59 Definitely. But there's a caveat there which is that when anything becomes too competitive, there's a health risk too. So we see a lot in increasing number of youth sports injuries. I mean obviously concussions are the most well-known example at this point in time, but at other moments there's been concerns about different joints, elbows, knees, increasing rates of girls who have particular types of knee injuries. We're seeing more and more overused injuries because kids are specializing at younger ages and so yes, there are these positive benefits and then you get to this inflection point and you're like, wait, there might actually be some bad physical things that go along with that. Jen: 08:38 Yeah, and this is just a hypothesis here that I'm generating on the fly, but I'm wondering if this recreational level of sport is actually better for a child's health than specializing and maybe I've heard of people who are very good at sports will say, oh yeah, I played three different sports until I was 12 and then I specialized and maybe that that general level of fitness actually serves them better than early specialization. Are you aware of any research on that? Dr. Friedman: 09:01 Yes, there's definitely a lot of anecdotal evidence by those who are professional like you mentioned, like Tom Brady famously says, he played all kinds of sports until he was much older and so there's this cross training idea. You're not just working the same muscle or muscle groups over and over again. So, you're developing other types of skills too. So, let's say you were really into football, but if you play soccer too, then you're developing the foot-eye coordination in addition to the hand-eye coordination. So, that's definitely a big thing and there's been a lot of research by those who focus on Sports Medicine and Pediatric Sports Medicine that thinks that this is quite important or again from the opposite side, like the increasing number of overuse injuries that are being seen, you can assume that if you're not just using the same muscles over and over again, that there would be a different outcome. Jen: 09:55 Okay. So, there are some really beneficial aspects of sports for children. There are also some potential issues with doing a certain kind of sport too much. So, setting aside the physical thing from it, which I think is where most of us go immediately when we think about sports. Let's talk about some of the psychological and sociological issues. So, the first one that comes to mind for me is what is up with the participation trophies for every child. I think this is more of an American phenomenon than one that seen in other countries and I'm wondering firstly if that's the case and secondly would it not be better for a child to just learn how to be disappointed that they didn't always win something? Dr. Friedman: 10:36 Yeah. So, participation trophies are a major issue and this notion that everybody deserves something and on the one hand you can see that a child did a whole season, put in the work, kept their commitment and so it's nice to have a celebration, right? So that could be a pizza party and it doesn't have to involve an actual sort of tacky gold trophy because most of them are actually not very attractive and ended up being dust gatherers as opposed to a team goes to a tournament and actually wins first place and that has a lot more meaning. I've interviewed kids about this and they're under no illusions that a participation trophy means like you won first place in a tournament. What I will say about participation trophies and from when I interviewed the kids for playing to win, the first one they got meant something to them and continue to mean something. Dr. Friedman: 11:34 But the subsequent ones didn't mean much at all. So, it does appear to be more of an American phenomenon. We certainly see it in other places as well as some aspects of American culture have spread to other countries. But if everybody gets a trophy, like what does it mean? The Incredibles 2 just came out this year and is now just recently released to Blu-ray and DVD and all of that. But the original Incredibles, they have a line in there that says if everybody is special, then nobody is special. So I think that there's a perception that that's what the participation trophies mean for a lot of families. Then also I had a lot of parents say like, wow, I paid a lot of money for like that dollar and thirty cent trophy, it’s so cheap, but I actually paid a lot of money for it. Dr. Friedman: 12:23 So, people are not dumb, kids are not dumb and they understand that that doesn't mean that you're a champion, let's say. Jen: 12:33 So, why do we keep doing it then if the kids see through it and the parents see through it and I think you called it something like parceling out the honor and making every age group at certain subset and within that age group, they're best of this and best of that. And so why do we keep doing this if everybody sees through it and realizes that it's not really real? Dr. Friedman: 12:52 Yeah. So the carving up of honor is a little bit different because at least that is based on some sort of achievement. So, I call it the carving up of honor because now we give prizes, the first place to eight year olds, born in the month of November practice only three hours a week. Dr. Friedman: 13:10 So, there are very specific groups and this is born out of this desire, let's say to say my child is a champion, my child's the national champion of x, y, or z. Where does that come from? That comes from this trend toward quantification that we've seen, the ability to measure achievement and the extracurricular space that then is highly linked to the college admissions process and so sure these things aren't happening until you're 18, but there's this trickle-down effect, particularly in the upper middle class community that we start seeing at younger and younger ages. Jen: 13:49 Okay. So, staying with the idea of just for a minute longer about the idea of becoming elite athletes and do parents really start their children playing sports thinking my kid's going to be the next Mia Hamm, my kid's going to be the next Beckham because it seems though that's not very likely to happen. Dr. Friedman: 14:07 No. I mean I think that there has been a push and people are becoming more sophisticated in terms of the notion that, first of all being a professional athlete, those odds are super, super, super slim making it to the Olympics in most fields. Odds are super, super slim but people have thought for a while, oh, but I'll get a college scholarship and that will make it worth it. But in fact like the number of NCAA athletes who have a scholarship is incredibly small because it's only Division I schools and then only a certain number of Division I schools and then even within that group, the number of students that got a “full ride” to be a college athlete as a percentage of all collegiate athletes, let alone all high school athletes is extremely small. It's like 4%. Dr. Friedman: 14:59 So, I think there was this idea for a long time and I think there's some truth to participating in athletics helps get you a spot at certain types of institutions. So, Division III Liberal Arts Schools where the student body is much smaller, but they're still filling a huge number of sports teams and they have to have students to fill those roster slots. Sure, like athletics can give you a boost. There's other ways too, if you play a certain type of sport, let's say Squash or you do Crew that's going to send a particular signal about your family's class background. So, there are all kinds of ways in which sports can boost your ability to get into college. But it's not necessarily gonna get you dollars to go to college. In fact, many of these places there are no college scholarship, so you're paying money to go there. But it's expanding the world of possibilities for some students in terms of getting into more selective schools. Jen: 15:59 Okay. So, when you ask parents what are their goals for enrolling their young children in sports, what are they telling you? Dr. Friedman: 16:09 Yeah, so I mean, I think there are, and I definitely met parents who are thinking more explicitly about the college process, but more than anything, most parents want to help their child find what they love, what they're passionate about. I know that some people don't like this word passion, but to find an activity or a setting that gives a child an identity, a social group, all of those things where they're going to be able to excel and find themselves and feel like they belong and so parents, especially parents of elementary school age kids are exposing their kids to a lot of different activities and a lot of different sporting activities and kind of seeing what sticks. Jen: 16:54 Okay. So parents, their stated goals, I think you realized they’re a little bit different than what might be some of their unstated goals. You've touched on this a little bit with the term Competitive Kid Capital, so can you tell us a little bit about what are some of these unstated reasons that are sort of underlying the issues that parents will actually talk about? Dr. Friedman: 17:18 Yeah. So, first of all I mentioned the upper middle class, most of the families that I met would be considered middle class and many of them upper middle class. And so these are families that are doing well financially, but aren't going to have necessarily a trust fund to pass onto their kids, right? So they're there by dint of hard work, motivation, advanced degrees, like an MD, a JD and MBA, so any of these kind of professional degrees. And you can't pass that degree onto your kids, right? So, I always actually used to use the example of Donald Trump, like his company was a public company and you can't just pass that onto your kids, right? And so they have to go through some… Jen: 18:01 It turns out maybe you can… Dr. Friedman: 18:03 Yeah, maybe you can, but you have go through some credentialing process to do that. And so what you can pass onto your kids if you're a doctor is learning how to manage a busy schedule and how to be competitive, how to lose and bounce back and keep fighting. And so these competitive activities and competitive sports in particular, and you could argue for both boys and girls, but there's a big impact on women as well here is a way to do that. And it costs money to do these activities, right? Like they're not free. They're very class based to do these travel sports in particular and so this is like a gate-keeping way of teaching kids these skills that hopefully will have these much longer term outcomes. Jen: 18:53 Okay. So, you've mentioned college as a potential outcome and the fact that there could be some money there but maybe not. I'm curious about even beyond college, what connections do you see between longer term career success and success in sports as a child? Dr. Friedman: 19:09 Well, so absolutely those who play college sports have different labor market outcomes. There's an interesting book called Privilege by another sociologist, Lauren Rivera that looks at the hiring practices of major law firms, management consultants, investment banks, sorts of high prestige occupations and they still care about like did you play, were you on a team in college, right? Because that shows your dedication, your like sort of willing to put yourself through the ringer and be in like mental and physical discomfort and like work through that. And that's pretty powerful, right? And those are like high income occupations and so we see it through college, through graduate school and then into the labor market. So, I think that there is a lot there. Even parents I...