Playing to Win. Hilary Levey Friedman
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 fees and give out ranked awards at events where young kids risk injury to be number one.5 The forces that have led to increasing in e quality in education, the workplace, and other spheres have come to the world of play. This means that Competitive Kid Capital is unequally distributed.
What are the social forces that have shaped the evolution of these children’s competitive activities from roughly the turn of the twentieth century up to the present? The answer is linked to major changes in three social institutions: the family, the educational system, and the organization of competition and prizes. This chapter provides a history of the development of competitive children’s activities in the United States. To illustrate this history, I examine the evolution of the three case study activities: chess, soccer, and dance.
COMPETITIVE AFTER - SCHOOL HOURS OVER TIME
Beginning in the late nineteenth century compulsory education had important consequences for families and the economy. With the institution of mandatory schooling children experienced a profound shift in the structure of their daily lives, especially in the social organization of their time. Compulsory education brought leisure time into focus; since “school time” was delineated as obligatory, “free time” could now be identified as well.6
What to do with this free time? The question was on the minds of parents, social workers, and “experts” who doled out advice on child rearing. The answer lay partly in competitive sports leagues, which started to evolve to hold the interest of children, the first phase in the development of children’s competitive activities. Overall we can identify three key periods of development: the first runs from the Progressive Era through World War II; the second moves from the postwar period to the 1970s; and the third takes us from the 1980s into the present.7
Seeds of Competition: Progressive Era to World War II
The Progressive Era, with its organizational and reform impulses, inevitably focused on children’s lives.8 These impulses gave rise to some of the earliest organized competitive events among American children. For example, reformers concerned about the health of babies started “better baby” contests in 1908 as a way to teach primarily immigrant and lower-class mothers the values of hygiene and nutrition.9 The contests were often held at state fairs, where judges evaluated children along several dimensions, including measurements and appearance, in order to find the “healthiest” or the “most beautiful” baby.10 These contests required little more of the baby than to submit to being poked, prodded, and put on display; the competition was really among adults.11
Reformers didn’t forget older children. With the simultaneous rise of mandatory schooling and laws restricting child labor,12 worry mounted over the idle hours of children, which many assumed would be filled with delinquent or self-destructive activities. Urban reformers were particularly preoccupied with poor immigrant boys who, because of overcrowding in tenements, were often on the streets.13
Reformers’ focus was less on age-specific activities and more generally on “removing urban children from city streets.”14 Initial efforts focused on the establishment of parks and playgrounds, and powerful, organized playground movements developed in New York City and Boston.15 But because adults “did not trust city boys to play unsupervised,” attention soon shifted to organized sports.16
Sports were seen as important in teaching the “American” values of cooperation, hard work, and respect for authority. Progressive reformers thought athletic activities could prepare children for the “new industrial society that was emerging,”17 which would require them to be physical laborers. Organized youth groups such as the YMCA took on the responsibility of providing children with sports activities.
In