raw talent, and substantial family resources, so only a few children can realistically pursue this path.
The “generalist” avenue is more common; it focuses on cultivating children into the all-around student who works “different muscles,” as Jeremiah’s parents put it. Generalist parents want their child to succeed in a variety of competitive endeavors, even though their child may not be the top competitor in one activity. Parents like Marla and Josh highlight particular skills that they think their children learn from participation in competitive activities, such as good sportsmanship, discipline and focus, and how to follow a schedule.
Often these generalist children try different activities in their youth, acquiring various skills from each before moving on to the next one, unless the kids really distinguish themselves in a particular activity and stick with it longer. As children get older there is often a transition from being a generalist to being a specialist, as the focus shifts from being well-rounded to attaining a special achievement, usually around high school.
Drawing upon Bourdieu’s work on both cultural capital (defined as proficiency and familiarity with dominant practices, particularly with respect to adeptness in the educational system) and the habitus (defined as a system of dispositions that manifests in various types of taste, such as speech and dressing),48 I label the lessons and skills that parents hope their children gain from participating in competitive activities “Competitive Kid Capital.” The character associated with this Competitive Kid Capital that parents want their children to develop is based on the acquisition of five skills and lessons, which emerged in conversations with parents: (1) internalizing the importance of winning, (2) bouncing back from a loss to win in the future, (3) learning how to perform within time limits, (4) learning how to succeed in stressful situations, and (5) being able to perform under the gaze of others.
Internalizing the importance of winning is a primary goal in acquiring Competitive Kid Capital. One parent told me, “I think it’s important for him to understand that [being competitive] is not going to just apply here, it’s going to apply for the rest of his life. It’s going to apply when he keeps growing up and he’s playing sports, when he’s competing for school admissions, for a job, for the next whatever.”
Competitive children’s activities reinforce winning, often at the expense of anything else, by awarding trophies and other prizes. Such an attitude appears to help bring success in winner-take-all settings like the school system and some labor markets.49 Though many activities do award participation trophies, especially to younger children, the focus remains on who wins the biggest trophy and the most important title.
Linked to learning the importance of victory is learning from a loss to win in the future, another component of Competitive Kid Capital. This skill involves perseverance and focus; the emphasis is on how to bounce back from a loss to win the next time. A mom explained, “The winning and losing is phenomenal. I wish it was something that I learned because life is really bumpy. You’re not going to win all the time and you have to be able to reach inside and come back. Come back and start fresh and they are able to. I’m not saying he doesn’t cry once in a while. But it’s really such a fantastic skill.”
Because competitive activities belong to organizations that keep records, the stakes are higher than in recreational leagues, and children can see that it matters that there is a record of success. These childhood competitive activities can also help kids learn how to recover from public failures and how to apply themselves and work hard in order to be long-term winners. Kids learn the identity of being a winner only by suffering a loss. This father summarizes the sentiment, trying to raise a son to be a winner in life:
This is what I’m trying to get him to see: that he’s not going to always win. And then from a competitive point of view, with him it’s like I want him to see that life is, in certain circumstances, about winning and losing. And do you want to be a winner or do you want to be a loser? You want to be a winner! There’s a certain lifestyle that you have to lead to be a winner, and it requires this, this, this and this. And if you do this, this, this and this, more than likely you’ll have a successful outcome.
Learning how to succeed given time limits is a critical skill as well—one of the “this” things you have to do to be a winner—and a critical component of Competitive Kid Capital. There are time limits for games, tournaments, and routines, and the competition schedule is also demanding, cramming many events into a weekend or short week. On top of that children need to learn how to manage their own schedules, which they might have to do someday as busy consultants and CEOs. One boy revealed how busy his young life is when he told me what soccer teaches him: “Dodging everything—like when we have to catch a train, and there are only a few more minutes, we have to run and dodge everyone. So, soccer teaches that.”
Children also learn how to perform and compete in environments that require adaptation, a fourth ingredient in the Competitive Kid Capital recipe. These environments may be louder, more distracting, colder, hotter, larger, or smaller than anticipated in preparations, but competitors, and especially winners, learn how to adapt. The adaptation requires focus on the part of children—to focus only on their performance and eventual success. The following quote by a mom of a fourth-grader links this to performing well on standardized tests:
It’s that ability to keep your concentration focused, while there’s stuff going on around you. As you go into older age groups, where people are coming in and out, the ability to maintain that concentration, a connection with what’s going on, on the board in front of you, and still be functional in a room of people, it’s a big thing. I mean to see those large tournaments, in the convention centers, I know it is hard. I did that to take the bar exam, and the LSAT I took for law school, and GREs. You do that in a large setting, but some people are thrown by that, just by being in such a setting. Well that’s a skill, and it’s a skill and it’s an ability to transfer that skill. It’s not just a chess skill. It’s a coping-with-your-environment skill.
Finally, in this pressure-filled competitive environment children’s performances are judged and assessed in a very public setting by strangers—the final component to Competitive Kid Capital. This dance mom explains:
I think it definitely teaches you awareness of your body and gives you a definite different stance and confidence that you wouldn’t have. For example, you’re told to stand a certain way in ballet, which definitely helps down the road. When she has to go to a job interview, she’s going to stand up straight because she’s got ballet training; she’s not going to hunch and she’s going to have her chin up and have a more confident appearance. The fact that it is not easy to get up on a stage and perform in front of hundreds or thousands of people, strangers, and to know that you’re being judged besides, definitely gives you a level of self-confidence that can be taken to other areas so again if she has to be judged by a teacher or when she’s applying for a job she’ll have more of that confidence, which helps you focus.
Children are ranked, both in relation to others’ performance in a particular competition and in relation to participants their age. These appraisals are public and often face-to-face, as opposed to standardized tests which take place anonymously and privately. Being able to perform under the gaze of others toughens children to shield their feelings of disappointment or elation, to present themselves as competent and confident competitors.
While all of the parents I met believe their children need to develop this Competitive Kid Capital to succeed later in life, most were also concerned that their kids lack free time to play or to “just be kids.” What is remarkable is that despite sometimes deep ambivalence, families keep their children involved in competitive activities. Even when the specific activity may change (for example, a child leaves soccer for lacrosse, or gymnastics for dance), children I met remain actively engaged in competition and in their second-shift activities after school. Their parents want to ensure they are giving their young children every possible opportunity to succeed in the future, in an often unpredictable
