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Why are we organizing our kids so much?
The data confirm what I have long suspected:
Childhood's outdoor pastimes are declining fast and the rate has accelerated in the past decade, especially the past five years, according to the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) annual survey of physical activity.
Since 1995, the portion of children ages 7 to 11 who swim, fish or play touch football has declined by about a third. Canoeing and water skiing are down by similar amounts.
The relationship between kids and their bikes is especially telling. In 1995, 68% of children ages 7 to 11 rode a bike at least six times a year. Last year, only 47% did. The sales of children's bikes fell from 12.4 million in 2000 to 9.8 million in 2004, a 21% decline, according to Bicycle Industry and Retailer News,an industry magazine...
Children today tend to get outdoor exercise by appointment.
Soccer participation has been unchanged in the past decade — about 28% of kids age 7 to 11 play the sport. Soccer leagues and soccer camps are in full bloom this summer, although non-organized soccer games are uncommon.
Organized outdoor activities have kept kids moving. They are declining but much more slowly that unstructured outdoor play.
Little League participation has fallen to 2.1 million children, down 14% from its peak in 1997. But overall baseball playing — pick-up games, catch, pickle — has declined nearly twice as fast, the NSGA surveys show.
Here is the full story. Now how about some hypotheses?
1. Escalation of a signaling game. You have to get those kids ready for college now.
2. Reference frames are relative, and an initial slight increase in parental paranoia has fed upon itself and has been bumping up safety and control standards for many years.
3. Suburban sprawl is a tax on spontaneity. And as more kids get trapped into planned networks, it becomes harder to go it alone.
4. Parents have always wanted to exercise such control; only now has the ongoing growth of civil society provided the requisite institutions.
Any other nominations?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 19, 2005 at 05:41 AM in Education | Permalink
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Comments
Three related nominations:
1)50 years ago, we rode our bikes to school, to the store, downtown shopping, etc. In the 70s, 80s and 90s, bike theft became rampant, helmets became required (despite being decidedly uncool), and auto traffic patterns changed, making bicycle riding much less fun.
2) video games, home entertainment systems, and the internet. We had television then, which dismayed our parents, but kids stay indoors even more these days. Also, the high incidence of two-income families has led to considerable use of the new technology as a baby-sitter.
3) increased parental worry. 50 years ago, we wandered the neighbourhoods, rode just about anywhere on our bikes (streets or sidewalks, who cared?). Nowadays, parents are increasingly concerned about predators.
Posted by: The Eclectic Econoclast at Jul 19, 2005 7:06:52 AM
I have to chime in to second all of the nominations by "The Eclectic Econoclast," especially parental worry, which leads to more television and video games. I'm amazed to hear parents with young children rattle off their fears of sex offenders, traffic, bullying children, construction sites, and even bug bites as reasons why their kids are no longer allowed out of sight. Thus, little Johnny may be getting fatter in front of that TV, but at least you know he's exposed to no risk (i.e., life) whatsoever.
My only original contribution is a decrease in parental activity outdoors. Gone are the days where whole families went for long walks through the neighborhood after dinner, at least from my meager observations. My father used to run, do boxing workouts in the garage(heavy bag, jump rope, pushups), or hike through State parks and he always dragged me with him. Nowadays, if parents do find time to exercise, it's at the gym and never outdoors with their kids.
Posted by: Cecilius at Jul 19, 2005 7:53:39 AM
On the parental worry point - I think this might have to do with the declining # of children per family as well as the delay in childbirth. Although the probability of something bad happening to your child might be the same as it was before, parents are unwilling to risk the opportunity for such an uncommon event given that they have no close substitutes if they were to lose an only child past their child-bearing years.
A related question. Are Chinese parents obsessed with their children's schedules?
Posted by: J Hall at Jul 19, 2005 8:09:31 AM
The spontaneous activities my little cousins engage in are the ones that haven't been organized yet. Skateboarding
and rollerblading. The decline in those other sports may simply reflect a growing diversity in physical activities.
Does the study take into account the explosion in popularity of "extreme" sports? If you ever watch x-games you'll
see young kids doing things that are far more creative, uninhibited, reckless, and spontaneous than anything you can
do on a baseball field.
Posted by: Ginivan at Jul 19, 2005 8:47:42 AM
Start-up costs of pick-up games and the income effect from playing organized games.
Assume there is a cost to starting-up a game of touch football. Going to everyone’s house or calling, and there is an uncertainty. Perhaps you won’t be able to get enough people to play and you will have wasted your effort.
Perhaps when kids were involved in less organized sports they played were more willing to start there own pick-up games. They would then, having paid the costs of getting the group together, play for a longer period of time than, an organized game lasts. In a free “playing” market, this is the equilibrium amount of play-time.
With parents scheduling these events for the kids, children might want to play a little more, but it isn’t worth the start-up costs.
As to why these organizations suddenly exist. Reasons 1-4 sound good, but I’d also like to just throw out that we simply have more disposable income these days, leisure activites are where that usually shows itself. Plus, parents enjoy going to there kids soccer games, they don’t go watch them ride their bikes.
Posted by: josh at Jul 19, 2005 9:09:30 AM
I have to take issue with point #2: Suburban sprawl is a tax on spontaneity. It is far too easy to blame suburban life for most of today's evils. In theory, children should be participating in more outdoor activities in the suburbs because there is more open space.
An issue you didn't mention is the increase in two-worker families. Children are fed into programs as a form of babysitting. I find this to be a far more likely culprit than suburban living.
Posted by: Ted Craig at Jul 19, 2005 9:17:55 AM
Suburban living definitely contributed to my spontenaity as a child. Most of my friends lived just around the block, and I could easily simply walk over to their houses for whatever sort of playing we wanted to do. Football, pickle, catch, bike racing, whatever. I don't think the suburbs have much to do with it.
Posted by: Timothy at Jul 19, 2005 9:34:15 AM
The suburbs theory fits in well with Duany et al's Suburban Nation. There are a handful of well-organized newer developments mentioned (one in Northern Virgina, others in Florida and elsewhere). I'd be curious to see if these pro-organization trends are identical in those towns.
Posted by: ptm at Jul 19, 2005 9:37:10 AM
Judging from our experience, most of the cited reasons are correct,
but don't overlook how incredibly tempting modern houses are vs.
the great outdoors. Homes today are larger, more likely air-conditioned
and more equipped with mesmerizing toys and electronics. I often literally have to throw our kids outdoors on
nice days. Obsessive parental worry about stranger abduction and other
remote risks combines with the huge structural problem posed by low-density sprawl.
For many--most?--kids, neighborhood pick-up games simply aren't an option, and
we've conditioned them not to think in these terms anyway. "Sports" involves parents,
coaches, driving and uniforms.
Posted by: Daniel Akst at Jul 19, 2005 9:42:42 AM
Suburban living definitely contributed to my spontenaity as a child. Most of my friends lived just around the block, and I could easily simply walk over to their houses for whatever sort of playing we wanted to do. Football, pickle, catch, bike racing, whatever. I don't think the suburbs have much to do with it.
Posted by: Timothy at Jul 19, 2005 9:46:38 AM
I think the main drivers have all been mentioned but I have two other minor points that I think also act as additional drivers of this trend:
1) Less "free" space for kids to play in. When I was growing up 25 years ago there was still a lot of undeveloped land around. Behind my house was a farm and in front of my house was a field. At that same house 20 years later there is no open space for kids to play in. It is all homes and apartments. If I had to relive my childhood again in that house today I would imagine that I wouldn't spend much time outdoors because outdoors would only consist of my friend's and my yards.
2) Streets used to have sidewalks and homes in most mid-size cities were still relatively close to town or a commercial center. Living patterns for many people have dramatically changed - cul-de-sacs that feed into busier, faster arteries with no sidewalk and crosswalks. Plus suburbia tends to be further out in bedroom communities where nothing can be reached without a car. Hence why would you ride a bike if there is nothing to ride too? Much of main street has been hollowed out and relocated to malls. Go to the malls and see the number of kids just hanging out there.
A couple other points:
Although incidents of abductions may be down since I was a kid since the number of children on the streets has declined even more so the children that are out running around unsupervised have a higher probability of being abducted. So I don't think parents are necessarily acting irrationally about this. Plus the increased media focus has resulted in parents' greater awareness of the risk.
The growth of technology correlates with a sedentary lifestyle, more machines doing the work for us, and I have a high degree of confidence that the correlation will continue to hold going out into the future. Our economic activity has become much more sedentary. More and more people work sitting at a desk rather than in a factory, at a job site, etc. I don’t think kids are any less creative but what they are creative with, computers and video games, tend to be more focused on mental creativity rather than physical creativity – i.e. building forts. Given the future demand of the job market I think that although completely unintentional, what kids are now doing for play matches the skills of what they will be required to do as adults on the job.
Posted by: asiequana at Jul 19, 2005 10:04:54 AM
"Although incidents of abductions may be down since I was a kid since the number of children on the streets has declined even more so the children that are out running around unsupervised have a higher probability of being abducted. So I don't think parents are necessarily acting irrationally about this. Plus the increased media focus has resulted in parents' greater awareness of the risk."
If the chances of stranger abduction indeed have risen over the past few decades, they've gone from all-but-nonexistent to just-about-all-but-nonexistent. They're so low as to be meaningless in any rational evaluation.
Thinking back to my own experiences as a child in the late 1960's, I'd have to say that the biggest reason for the decline in spontaneous play is declining family size. You need a certain critical mass of children of roughly the same age and possibly the same gender to organize a baseball or touch football game. Even in a fully developed suburb, that can be a daunting task when the average family has only one or two children.
Posted by: Peter at Jul 19, 2005 10:26:57 AM
Echoing everyone else.
Children who take part in unsupervised activities are generally less supervised. Free to choose these kids choose to play video games. (My sister has to throw her 8 year old out the door) Thus the decline in unsupervised outime activity. Supervised kids aren't so 'lucky' thus the relative lack of decline in supervisd out door activity.
Posted by: BigMacAttack at Jul 19, 2005 10:45:23 AM
I think that the jockeying for admission to top colleges is a significant factor in the decrease in spontaneous play. These days parents feel that if they don't have their kid in preschool that the child's chances of admission to Ivy League schools will be harmed. When parents put their kids in an organized activity like soccer, they feel like progress is being made toward a goal. Spontaneous playing in the neighborhood is probably felt to be a waste of time.
Also, some of the sports mentioned are just plain boring. Baseball is slow and involves a lot of standing or sitting around. One of my brothers was an all star in little league but quit because it was so boring.
Posted by: Scott Peterson at Jul 19, 2005 10:59:45 AM
I played sandlot baseball or football every after school afternoon growing up. No parents anywhere. There were some injuries, but we learned to settle rule disputes, etc., without resorting to fists. This is a loss for the current generation.
Posted by: Bill Gardner at Jul 19, 2005 11:01:25 AM
Elaborating a little bit on what Peter said, smaller family size would also be a contributor to the growth of more supervised playtime because now we have the option to do so. My grandmother had 10 kids. Supervising and structuring their playtime was simply impossible. My mother had 5 kids and I now have two - much more manageable for two parents. It maybe that mothers in the past would have liked to supervise their children's time more but were outnumbered and therefore this simply was not viable. Although difficult to tell what followed what but peer pressure for parents is now as such that it is looked down on to let your kids run around unsupervised which only reinforces the trend.
Posted by: asiequana at Jul 19, 2005 11:02:36 AM
Another hypothesis: organization is a rational response to fact that competitive selection is used to allocate scare playing opportunities. Better coaching and more frequent practice make you more likely to succeed in a subsequent competitive selection competition. This is especially true for skill-intensive sports such as baseball and soccer. These competitions start at high levels (college, high school), but naturally filter down the age chain. In a sense, we are in the process of adopting the Communist State Athletic Development Model (tm): find the best kids at age 7, train ‘em like mad, and kick out everyone else.
As a result, you get reduced participation in both unorganized (lack of space and kids) and organized (insufficient time/money, “failure” at an early age) sports. Oddly, the kids in the system “benefit” from reduced participation as it reduces competition. Leagues can recoup the money by charging higher fees, but are left with a lower quality level. Of course if everyone is using the same system, you can’t see the quality change.
Where the change is quality is apparent is when you go outside the system. This explains (for me) a couple of things: why Latin players are increasing in professional baseball (lower quality of American players), why black players are declining in professional baseball (system filters out those who can’t afford to participate), and why U.S. soccer is internationally uncompetitive (private, parent-run, club system used to train players). Of course, other factors are at work as well, but I think this perverse system of incentives has not been given sufficent blame.
Posted by: Bob Hallman at Jul 19, 2005 11:33:11 AM
I want to echo Bill Gardner's comments. When I was a kid we played games all day, with kids of all ages. We would make up rules to make it fair for everybody, resolve disputes etc. And because when a team won, the team would get redistributed, a different set of people would win the next game. That way just about everybody would play on a winner and a loser. And would play multiple positions. A great deal of learning on social interaction rules took place there. For example I was one of the older people working for a startup about 6 years ago. We had a lot of 20 somethings in the company. On a July 3rd, we decided to have a picnic on a nearby field. We brought along equipment to play softball. We ended up with 18 people willing to play softball when you need 20 for two full teams. Going back to my childhood, I announced that right field was an automatic out for right handed batters and left field for left handed batters. The 20 somethings reacted as if I was crazy. To a person, they all said, you cannot just change the rules. We have to find two more people. I asked them if they ever played pickup sports and had to change the rules to fit the number of people and the space available. They all said no. This clearly will drive down the abilty to interact socially in any creative way in the future as well as drive down the ability to make rules that fit the situation be they social or business. Everyone will look to a central authority for the rules insteand of making it up as they go along. A definte loss.
Posted by: techreseller at Jul 19, 2005 11:47:02 AM
I'm not sure I agree fully with Bob, but the observation that obsessive competition, even in leisure activities, drives those activities out of most people's lives is surely true. I would say that when I was a kid (I'm 26 today) competitive pressures were such that from about 4th grade to college the least skilled twenty percent of participants in any given leisure activity were unsubtly encouraged to leave each year. This implies that after a few years most of the participants in most sports, art activities, etc would basically be told that they weren't good enough. As I look to the younger generation I see something like that even in the less competitive realm of playing video games. I wonder if ten years from now the video game industry will be experiencing a decline which they have difficulty interpreting.
Posted by: michael vasssar at Jul 19, 2005 12:03:17 PM
I doubt it's suburbanization, per se. Lots of America was pretty darn suburbanized by 1970, and those suburbs had more houses and fewer apartments than today. For adults, suburbs demand cars to get "anywhere", but for children, getting together with other children whom one knows from the neighborhood school, walking or riding a bike is sufficient to get from their houses to their friends' houses.
Cul-de-sacs and low-traffic residential neighborhoods make safer play spaces than urban parks or long straight streets.
I wonder if one culprit isn't the increasing urbanization of the suburbs?
Posted by: Anthony Argyriou at Jul 19, 2005 12:51:55 PM
techreseller,
Why do you need 20 people for softball? Are you using a DH? If you played with a short center position, you could just as easily eliminate that and play with baseball positions.
Posted by: Mo at Jul 19, 2005 2:13:38 PM
Anthony,
It's not suburbanization per se. I don't think anyone is saying that suburbanization is the only factor. However, it is more an issue of what the newer suburbs are now. Whereas the development used to be closer to the city center newer growth is further out and built as such that the only viable transportation is automobiles. Although kids may be able to play in the street with less traffic in their particular cul-de-sac they have little ability to go outside of it for lack of sidewalks and the need to maximize the flow of traffic on trunk routes make it dangerous to ride bikes in the street that join together all the cul-de-sacs and sub-developments. Others may have had different experiences but much of my bike riding was to go from my house to town.
I live in a suburban town outside NYC mostly settled in the 1930's. Houses are relatively close together and small by today's standard (you’d be appalled at the size of my closets), parks are liberally distributed and most households have kids because they specifically move here for the school. (Does anyone know if they have parks in the newer developments?) In my particular community at least I am happy to report there is still much bike riding and unsupervised play going on.
By the way suburbanization has definitely grown from the 70's from somewhere around the mid-30% of the population to now over 50%. And although it doesn't directly correlate we have the highest percentage of home ownership ever so I think it would be reasonable to assume that means a higher percent of people living in detached housing vs. apartment than before.
Posted by: asiequana at Jul 19, 2005 2:15:28 PM
1. Network effects. As organized activities become more popular, outdoor unstructured playtime becomes less fun and less safe. I send my kids to karate and gymnastics class because that's where the other kids are, not because I think it will help my kids get into Harvard or Stanford.
2. Signaling good parenting. Though many parents understand that the risks of abduction are slight, there's a societal consensus that it's a dangerous world out there. We show our attentiveness and care by keeping our kids indoors unless we're out there with them.
3. Suburban neighborhood design isolates. Cul-de-sacs with traffic-dense feeder roads and no sidewalks keep families from socializing because it's so unpleasant and even dangerous to bike or walk on the feeders to get to the other little cul-de-sacs. Traditional grid neighborhoods with sidewalks promote interaction.
Posted by: adtz at Jul 19, 2005 2:17:56 PM
Isn't everyone ignoring that kids share the decision making, too?
I had the typical suburban 60s/70s upbringing. We played baseball/football/hide-n-seek, etc. for entertainment all day during the summer and after school the rest of the year.
I remember a lot of the kids I played with were obnoxoious little s.o.b.s that I wouldn't hang out with if we didn't need x number of kids to play game y...
As a parent I have noticed kids appreciate quiet time alone as much as adults. Now that kids can have that kind of relaxation, they are taking it.
Posted by: monkyboy at Jul 19, 2005 5:14:51 PM
I don't know if the numbers would support this, but maybe there has been a decline in density of kids on any given age (at least compared with when I was a boy in the 1950s). This might reduce the odds of getting a critical mass of kids who like (or tolerate each other) within a block or two to support an informal spontaneous outdoor playgroup.
In our neighborhood of single family homes in northwest DC there have generally been two or three boys my son's age within a few blocks, but he's never gotten very friendly with them, and has always preferred play dates with kids from the far end of the elementary school district.
Posted by: Martin at Jul 19, 2005 10:14:04 PM
