Playing to Win. Hilary Levey Friedman
in terms of race/ethnicity (a little more than 50 percent are white), while the soccer parents I met are almost universally white (94 percent).
COMPETITION AND EDUCATIONAL CREDENTIALS IN THE UNITED STATES
America is frequently called a competitive country that focuses on achievement, as discussed in the preface. In this context achievement is often exemplified by the acquisition of credentials.16 The scholars Ran dall Collins and James English explain how this increasingly competitive environment has affected various realms in contemporary America—including the corporate world and the arts—as the focus on credentials becomes ever more dominant.17 In particular, as credentials grew ever more important throughout the twentieth century, the educational system became a screening system.
Max Weber, in some of his foundational work in sociology, argues that in a bureaucratic and hierarchical society, social prestige and status are based on credentials. As a consequence, performance on examinations and possession of degrees from particular institutions became centrally important.18 The need to perform well in school and to compete in order to secure a spot when only a limited number are available becomes a high priority. Parents, recognizing the need for their children to be prepared to acquire credentials, have grown to favor “a protected adolescence, curbing any turbulence or independence that might distract their sons [or daughters] from a steady preparation for success.”19
Credentialing tournaments were once limited to adolescence and high school. Outside the classroom, students entered athletic contests, joined debate teams, built “careers” as high school newspaper editors, and in hundreds of other ways sought to distinguish themselves in adolescence.
But today it would seem that for millions of middle-class, twenty-first-century American children, waiting until high school to prove one’s mettle is a mistake because the credentials bottlenecks these kids will face require much more advanced preparation.
Even the preschool set is busily trying to stand out from the crowd.20 Journalist and editor Pamela Paul explains, “Entry into a high-quality preschool (and thereby, the theory goes, a good elementary school, high school, and college) has become cutthroat.”21 In 2011 one mother sued a preschool for destroying her four-year-old daughter’s chances at an Ivy League education.22 While the suit was widely ridiculed, its existence illustrates the extreme parental anxiety that exists today, especially in upper-middle-class communities.
It is tempting to denounce these behaviors and preoccupations as the hyperfixations of neurotic parents who are living through their children. Many pundits are not hesitant to invoke analyses that are just shy of pathology. These parents are labeled “helicopter parents” who hover over their kids from infancy through college graduation, even until children secure employment after college.23
Are these parents crazy? Have they lost their grip? No. Their children face very real gates and gatekeepers through which they need to pass if they are going to achieve in ways similar to their parents. And the probability of that outcome appears to their parents—with good reason given the economic crises of the first decade of the twenty-first century—to be less than it once was. Demographics only heighten this demand, which has spiked in areas where there have been “baby boom-lets,” such as the Northeast.24
Parental concern over future academic options for their children may seem absurd since Baby Boomers and their children, the Echo Boomers, are thus far the best-educated and wealthiest generations ever seen in the United States. But Baby Boomers faced unusual levels of competition for scarce educational resources due both to their numbers and their coming of age when women first entered college in a significant way.25 Hence the cultural experience of competition, of an insufficient supply of spots for the size of the group seeking them, has predisposed these Boomers to see life as a series of contests,26 as Marla explained.
Pamela Druckerman, in her headline-making book claiming that the French raise their children better than Americans do, attributes part of the stress of American parents to changes that started in the 1980s linked to developing in e quality: “Around the same period, the gap between rich and poor Americans began getting much wider. Suddenly, it seemed that parents needed to groom their children to join the new elite. Exposing kids to the right stuff early on—and perhaps ahead of other children the same age—started to seem more urgent.”27
Also, because the Echo Boom is large and has a higher rate of college attendance than ever before, that particular competitive landscape is even more crowded. Popular press coverage of the low college acceptance rates, lower than ever of late at elite private and public universities,28 only fuels parents’ anxiety, buttressing existing anxiety over credentials, and hence contributing to an even more competitive childhood culture. Recent books, such as Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid into College and The Neurotic Parent’s Guide to College Admissions, capture parental feelings about the college admissions process.29
MOTIVATION FOR AN EARLY START IN THE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS RACE
Parents are working early on to ensure their children get into good colleges and pursue advanced degrees. College is especially important in the United States, where it plays “a pivotal role in shaping future class destinations.”30 The degree of instability that has become an unwelcome staple in the lives of millions of educated, professional workers has reinforced the importance of educational prestige as perhaps the only protection, dicey as it may be, against future family downward mobility.31 Most middle- and upper-middle-class families no longer pass on the family firm, so the ability to boost the succeeding generation into a better, or even the same, class is largely dependent on the next generation’s credentialing success.
Middle- and upper-middle-class parents are willing to invest large sums of money and time to make this a reality. In her work on the upper-middle class, Michèle Lamont explains that most “American upper-middle class men spend a considerable part of their life savings for the education of their children.”32 Families are willing to make such a large investment because higher education is at the heart of social reproduction.
But that money is not only spent on tuition. Parents are savvier than ever, investing both time and money so that their children get specialized instruction outside of the classroom.33 For many kids, extracurricular life is focused on athletics and other organized games. And those extracurricular activities, specifically sports, can offer an admissions boost, particularly at the most elite colleges and universities.34 Even though this boost is far from guaranteed, parents are willing to hedge their bets.
Participation in competitive activities is especially appealing in honing skills that will matter in the more weighty tournaments to come, because these proving grounds look like recreation. While parents in many Asian countries encourage their kids to spend countless hours hitting the books in English schools abroad or in cram schools at home,35 many American parents prefer to shroud the honing process in activities that can be—and are generally experienced as—fun. It is crucial to the American ethos of competition that it should not look too much like work, especially for children, even if the competitive experience clearly has work-like elements.36
At the same time it would be a mistake to think that parents of kids as young as Jeremiah fixate on specific college admissions offices every Saturday out on the soccer field. Instead they understand the grooming of their child as producing a certain kind of character and a track record of success in the more proximate tournaments of sports or dance or chess.
But were parents to think in directly instrumental terms about that thick admissions envelope, they would not be far off the mark. Activity participation, particularly athletics, does indeed confer an admissions advantage, through either athletic scholarships or an admissions “boost,” giving students an edge when applying to elite schools.37
A 2005 New York Times article on the growing popularity of lacrosse explained, “Families see lacrosse as an opportunity for their sons and daughters to shine in the equally competitive arenas of college admissions and athletic scholarships.”38 One parent is quoted in the article saying, “From what I hear on the