Kid Capital.
A PREVIEW OF THE COMPETITION
The following six chapters further contextualize how and why parents want their children to acquire Competitive Kid Capital by analyzing the roots and perceived benefits of participation in competitive children’s activities. Each chapter answers some overarching questions: Why have these competitive activities developed over time? How is the competition structured now, and in each research site? Why do parents believe these competitive activities and Competitive Kid Capital to be so important in their children’s lives? How do parents make decisions about the specific competitive activities for their children? In what ways is there an industry behind these organized competitive activities? What do the children think about their participation in these competitive activities?
Chapter 1 is a historical analysis of competitive activities for American children. Here I ask: What are the social forces that have shaped the evolution of children’s competitive activities from roughly the turn of the twentieth century up to the present? I show that organized, competitive children’s activities developed for elementary school–age kids but then became more prevalent among middle-class children than among their lower-class counterparts due to major changes in three social institutions: the family, the educational system, and the organization of competition and prizes in the United States. I trace the history of the development of competitive children’s activities in general and then offer a brief history of competitive chess, dance, and soccer.
Chapter 2 describes the contemporary structure of these activities and my field sites, drawing on mixed methods and triangulated data from fieldwork observations, adult interviews, and child interviews. Chapter 3 turns to the parents themselves, presenting descriptive data on the parents I studied in each activity and analyzing the beliefs that motivate the parents to enroll their children in these activities. We see striking similarities among all the parents, mainly in their narratives about how their children got started in their particular activities and the ways they talk about the benefits they think their children acquire through participation. Their narratives are well-developed, suggesting a shared worldview about the future by both generalist and specialist parents. The components of Competitive Kid Capital that parents want their children to acquire are described in detail in this chapter.
Chapter 4 turns to the differences that demarcate chess, dance, and soccer, particularly when it comes to gender. For example, why do some parents strategically select soccer rather than dance for their daughters? I argue that divergent gender scripts explain the pathways parents are choosing for their kids. Parents of dancers have more traditional gender ideas, emphasizing gracefulness and appearance, while soccer parents with daughters want to raise aggressive, or “alpha,”50 girls. I make the case that this distinction reveals forms of classed femininity, one of the most provocative arguments in Playing to Win. As the soccer parents can largely be thought of as upper-middle class and the dance parents as middle and lower-middle class, this shows an emerging gender divide within the middle class around aspirations for girls.
Chapter 5 delves deeper into the organizational context that surrounds parental decision making. Many of the parenting practices I observed are embedded in institutions, and these institutions offer a critical mediating level between individual choice and societal “culture.” I argue that there is a world of competitive childhood, designed to maximize acquisition of Competitive Kid Capital—and ordered to make money off parents who are focused on its acquisition. I discuss similarities in the way the activities are organized, including the reward structures, organization of competitions, selection processes, and conflicts among competitive children’s activities. I also identify processes such as the “carving up of honor” and the “problem of the high-achieving child.” Understanding that there is a business world organized to convince parents of the benefits of competitive kids’ activities helps us better contextualize parents’ motivations. They no longer get information just from other parents at the school bus stop.
Chapter 6 places the attention on those kids at the bus stop by investigating their own daily lives and beliefs. What do they think about their participation in competitive activities, and in what ways do their conceptions differ from adults’? Children have definite views about their activities. This raises the question of whether children are actually acquiring the Competitive Kid Capital that their parents want them to have or are learning different kinds of skills and lessons, some of which may be unintended, such as being more social and cooperative than focused on winning at all costs. I highlight three main themes that consistently emerged from interactions with children: dealing with nerves and mistakes while being judged, comparing individual versus team success, and the role that trophies, ribbons, and other material rewards play in children’s continued participation in these competitive activities. Over- all kids find their participation in these competitive activities fun, even as they work hard to acquire the Competitive Kid Capital their parents want them to have, along with a few other lessons along the way. Children’s own quite strong and divisive ideas about gender are also discussed.
Combined with a conclusion and an appendix, these six chapters represent a contribution to a cultural sociology of in e quality by studying the daily lives of mostly middle-class American families as the parents work to develop the Competitive Kid Capital that they think will help guarantee their children’s future success (note that the diversity of the middle class is represented here with some families falling in the upper-middle class, defined as having at least one parent who has earned an advanced postgraduate degree and is working in a professional or managerial occupation and both parents having earned a four-year college degree, and lower-middle-class families, defined as only one parent having a college degree and/or neither parent working in a professional or managerial occupation). Though only a snapshot, the intensity of what we see here reveals the outlines of a major feature of childhood today and illustrates the ways competition is now a central aspect of American childhood, showing that countless boys and girls no longer simply play—they play to win.
ONEOutside Class
A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CHILDREN’S COMPETITIVE ACTIVITIES
Middle-class children’s lives are filled with adult-organized activities, while working-class and poor children fill their days with free play and television watching.1 This is one of the central observations of Annette Lareau’s ethnographic study of families raising third-grade children around Philadelphia.2 Lareau’s findings about the way children from middle-class families use their time is consistent with popular conceptions of overscheduled American kids who are chauffeured and schlepped from activity to activity on a daily basis.3
Of course the overscheduled children of the middle class not only participate in myriad after-school activities; they also compete. These elementary school–age kids try out for all-star teams, travel to regional and national tournaments, and clear off bookshelves to hold all of the trophies they have won. It has not always been this way. About a hundred years ago, it would have been the lower-class children competing under nonparental adult supervision while their upper-class counterparts participated in noncompetitive activities, often in their homes. Children’s tournaments, especially athletic ones, came first to poor children—often immigrants—living in big cities.
Not until after World War II did these competitive endeavors begin to be dominated by children from the middle and upper-middle classes. In the 1970s American children witnessed an explosion of growth in both the number of participants and the types of competitive opportunities available to them. This growth crowded out many who could not pay to play.
Today it costs a lot to participate in a diverse set of competitive circuits and tournaments that are now big business. For future Michelle Wies there is a youth PGA; for future Dale Earnhardts there is a kids’ NASCAR circuit; and for future Davy Crocketts there are shooting contests.4 There is even a Junior Bull Riders circuit that starts children as young as three in mutton-busting contests, trying to stay on a lamb as long as possible. These competitive activities charge participant
