Maybe We Are Bowling Alone Cause Our Kids Are Playing League Soccer in Andover

I’m very into podcasts. Spent a while being very into The Ezra Klein Show, Plain English with Derek Thompson and The Grey Area with Sean Illing. I still listen to at least one podcast from that trio a week. And a lot of the observations are about the benefits of social gatherings. I listen to these observations with comfort. I hear of the loneliness epidemic and it breaks my heart but it doesn’t resonate with my life. I have a uniquely positive relationship with about 20 people on my block, couples, kids. We have routine activities. We have gone out of town together. I can share difficult things and get useful help and tangible empathy from many of them. Bands are a unique source of togetherness. Playing gigs, rehearsing. I think one of the reasons the pandemic was hard on my work in Heiruspecs was how the shitty, solitary parts of being the manager of a band remained exactly the same level of shittiness and the good parts of being in a band basically completely disappeared. Suffice it to say, loneliness is a rough shake for a lot of people in our society. But even for people who are not suffering from abject loneliness, they are spending less time with friends than we were a generation ago. There is less membership in civic groups, less engagement in Church et cetera. I want to talk about that variety and strain of loneliness. And what I haven’t heard connected yet is if it a never ending cycle of parents who were over-scheduled and over-parented engineering an even more scheduled life for their children and then when the children grow up they seek out a similar level of intensity for their kids. I know a handful of people who do massive amounts of demanding shit with their kid/s on the regular. Largely sports, but not exclusively. You do everything you can for your kids. It’s the adage, it’s frequently the reality. But what do YOU lose when you do everything for your kid, parent? And perhaps, what does your kid lose when they can do everything? It’s an arms race of busyness. I read about the meritocracy. Or more accurately about the falsities and the hopelessness of the meritocracy. I read about the meritocracy trap depriving young people of free play. But I think this is impacting the parent’s too.

I struggle mightily with making sense with the good and bad of my childhood. Plenty of good, but the good is boring. It doesn’t roll around my head like the bad does. I had a bunch of time to myself, a bunch of skills/knowledge that seem to get passed down as a birthright from one generation to the next wasn’t passed down to me. I learned amazing things learning on my own. But I didn’t learn to swim until late like maybe second/third grade. I didn’t learn to ride a bike until sixth grade. The whole affair seemed very ala carte. And part of me liked that, but also, it’s all I knew. I look back and long for some more structure. But I am comfortable being bored, I am comfortable engineering an evening of events I believe I will enjoy, I am comfortable getting my own affairs in order socially. I find these skills immensely helpful. Do I wish I had been strong armed into Little League cause most kids were doing it? Yes, I do. I don’t think I should’ve have that much of a choice in it to be honest. I don’t know. For some reason I went to the try-outs, but I didn’t try-out. I can’t remember all of that one, it’s so vague. . .I think a lot about Little League for someone who never played it.

But, a lot of what I hear about parents from previous generations just seems generally more adult-centric. Dinner groups, rotary meetings, Church groups, longer visits with friends that had nothing to do with kids. Maybe this is the way I see it because this is the way I want it, now that I’m a dad. I envision these quiet, compliant children in the 70s who were allowed to roam the neighborhood with zero observation. I envision parents living fuller lives as individuals, and the children living fuller lives as individuals and I imagine more happiness. It’s a fiction, but I think there’s something to it. When there is no limiting factor on what activities your kid can do if the activities they choose are generally agreed upon to be positive, what gives the parents the breathing room they deserve to craft their life to. When you as the parents have let your friend group atrophy, can you refill your cup to give your children what they actually need, which is a complete person for a parent. I understand though I question the fear side of the equation. The abductions, the violations, the horrors prompting parents to maintain a level of control previous generations hadn’t considered. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. I reject that as a whole story. I think we say yes to activities to kids, and the internet has made the buffet of activities overly sized. So on a note when you could be with your friends, you are at a league soccer post-season game for the bronze medal. It’s commendable, it’s likely fun to be at the soccer, perhaps you even build a rapport with your fellow parents. But does that rapport go deep like it does with your chosen friends? Does that rapport fill up your cup? Does that rapport challenge you? Maybe we need a recalibration with a lot of room built in for “jack shit” “playing grabass”. I fear we have sucked every inefficiency out of life, the texts roll in like clockwork, the kid is picked up if the sleepover is bad, you can watch the games online, there are snacks for sale. I want less certainty. I want more slack. I want more parent-centric gatherings. I want to be absent for some of my kids firsts, I want them to find their own way to things from time to time. I don’t want to go to Andover. I don’t think she needs to do league soccer.