I have first hand experience of the deleterious impact of competitive female sports. My sister played a sport for a top college in the US and I dated several other competitor female athletes at the top collegiate level in the US (D1). All faced pressure to develop an eating disorder and a few succumbed. Many of those women had issues with their menstrual cycle and later issues with conceiving. Another aspect that you don’t cover here (perhaps it’s stronger in the US), is the pressure to skip church/mass. My parents and sister routinely skipped church during her high school years because they were off at travel tournaments. This sets a bad precedent for the child (and the other children in the family) as it implicitly places organized sports at the top of the family value hierarchy or at least places it above religion.
I want my daughter to be healthy and fit, but at a level commensurate with her sex and design.
Thank you for this point about skipping church. I do worry about that pressure to skip church for my young son. Why don’t more sports leagues allow kids to go to church and rest?
Because Christians are soft and won’t put up a fight. They’d rather go along to get along and play Sunday morning instead of forfeiting or not showing up
When my youngest daughter was in grade school (early 1980s) the gym teacher who had a side business training gymnasts, saw potential in her and approached me about letting her join his team. But I knew the grueling devotion that required because my oldest daughter's best friend had been doing gymnastic competition for her entire youth. She was at the gym at 5 am working out before school and gone every weekend to meets. To what end?
I told him that I knew she was limber but she was already big for her age and that all the work she would put in would get her nowhere because female gymnasts are usually of small stature. He didn't like my rejection but I signed her up in Camp Fire Girls where she learned all kinds of skills and once she was in middle school she tried out for cheerleading and her agility was put to good use. I never regretted that decision.
I dropped out of competitive sports at 16 because of girl drama and a Coach who we were sure had a thing for a young lady who used that to her advantage and the disadvantage of the rest of us. Curiously, I became more focused on fitness when I stopped sports and just worked out. Then I coaches children’s swim team. My sister stopped team sports and focused on equestrian training and golf. We were both happier than our peers.
Excellent to hear. People think that competitive sports is amazing for girls because they compare it to doing nothing, which is obviously deeply unnatural and unhealthy in the other direction. Thanks Haley
Yes definitely. My dad was in the army for years so physical fitness was very important and upheld as virtue in our home, but he wasn’t a competitive athlete so that aspect was never pushed. Our parents were just happy if we were staying active and having fun. When it stopped being fun they didn’t mind us leaving. In fact, my sister’s most competitive thing in her teen years was showing animals in 4-H. That form of competition was much more mentally stimulating and gave her skills pertinent to adulthood
I sent this to a friend who played softball in college at a Division 1 school (that’s a very big deal here in the US). She has a daughter now and is wary of competitive sports for her girl, though she does push her girl to be active through swimming, golf, tennis and simply playing outside. She loved this article!
She also credits her college sport career with giving her back her faith. Playing ball at that level was stressful and the angst she felt forced her to come to terms with her purpose. She realized sport was not her life’s work. And Faith was the only thing that helped her accept that. She’s now a devout Christian and a wonderful mother, wife and school teacher
I anticipate you'll get some pushback on this one!!
The last part of this piece I think is really key. Our lives default to being super sedentary without deliberately doing otherwise, and athletics seems like an "easy" way to counter that. My boys have benefitted hugely from competitive sports, though even there we avoid the travel leagues and super regimented and adult controlled style of play, which doesn't even seem fun. But my daughters, who are younger, are completely uninterested, though they still like doing things like playing around in the woods, jumping rope, and they might play a pickup game or two if they have the opportunity. But the play is just different when it's both boys and girls even in a neighborhood game.
I wonder if, in girls' sports, if it's that girls who are prone to those sorts of maladaptive behaviors who end up playing at the most competitive levels. I run, but not competitively, and I've always taken breaks around babies. It's annoying to be slower again when I pick it back up but I've never suffered major injuries or problems like elite female athletes do, and the mental health benefit is substantial as is the general physical activity.
(I think I might even argue that a lot of this might even apply to boys and men at the most elite levels in terms of stress, injury, work/life balance. I'm also, to be very frank, not a huge fan of spectator sports in general - I think there are some benefits but very possibly outweighed by drawbacks.)
Thanks for the comprehensive comment Penguin Mom. I'm actually glad for any pushback on this one, I'm still consolidating my thoughts on the issue and the criticism is helpful
I was thinking it through as I wrote my comment, too, as well as reading the other comments. I'm not sure yet, but I think I'm landing on the idea that hyper competitive sports are probably bad for both boys and girls, but it's entirely possible that the negative effects are more obvious for girls - not because girls are defective or all psychotic or whatever, but because girls are more vulnerable. I think this applies to other areas too in modern culture too so seeing it through that framework isn't novel for me.
I'm not sure what it is like over in the UK, but the ramped-up pressure for girls to compete in the US was largely tied to higher education scholarship money.
How do you balance these negative effects against the positive effects of physical strength and fitness? Competitive sports are a powerful driver for an active lifestyle and developing a strong and healthy body. Is there a way to hit the sweet spot of being engaged in physical activities like sports without being so deep into it that it hurts you?
I think often about combat sports. I'm a huge supporter of martial arts and combat sports as a part of every man's development, but I wouldn't want to, nor would I want my son to aspire to be a professional boxer. It's just not worth the brain damage and I don't believe cutting weight is healthy. I do however think it's good to be an enthusiastic hobbyist or even an amateur competitor and I would also encourage my daughters to know how to fight.
Honestly, the biggest driver for an active lifestyle for children, is watching you, their parent, have an active lifestyle. Children mimic what they see. If mom and dad don’t stay physically active then guess what? Neither do the kids. Sports has nothing to do with it.
I agree that your influence as the parent is supreme, and that they seek to emulate you. I further agree that this will carry them longer than experience in organized athletics. “Nothing“ might be overstating yet, and I think there are ways to participate even in competitive pipelines without getting sucked into it, as long as you help them keep their priorities straight
Honestly, sports should never be a ‘professional’ endeavour for anyone., male or female. It should be something that is for amateurs (for those who love it) who have a life outside it. The second any serious money is involved, the athletes become objects to use and discard when they break. You can still have excellence, ranked competitions and leagues, but none of the profiteering and gambling profiteering that ends up hurting the athletes and audiences alike.
None of my three children, girl, boy, boy, now in their thirties, were competitive athletes. Those health stats about female athletes are scary. But, as well, one child's drive to excel at a sport can dominate a family to ill effect. Travel teams on the weekend and uneven attention.
My sister said the same thing to me a while back regarding an argument over young sheldon (when Missy wanted to join the baseball team and the coach laughed and said "girls don't play baseball"), she said "that coach is right". I ultimately accepted that my sister must be right, due to her superior rhetoric. But now I think I've properly realized why.
I wonder where Ballet falls into? I suppose it's less competitive and more artistic, though it still comes with the ED, the SA and the loss of menstruation.
Re. ballet - depends on the seriousness of the school. If it's a serious pipeline to a professional career I'd be pretty worried for my daughter, for the reasons outlined in the piece. I love ballet, but the road for professionals is a gruelling and often vulnerable one. If it's just a nice local school which your daughter enjoys then no problem
Professional ballet, at the extreme, for some, does come with all those same costs as elite sports but amateur and hobby ballet which is increasingly popular with girls and women of literally all ages really doesn't. It's brilliant for both the body and the mind. It's tougher than tough and very feminine. I'd highly recommend it.
Very helpful piece--I was completely unaware of the evidence for negative effects of competitive sports on women, but now having heard it I believe it. I have a young daughter approaching school age and me default plan was to focus on competitive sports because I enjoyed / received so much from them as a child. But I appreciate how the effects could be different for boys vs girls.
Any thoughts on: 1) "rec league" sports that place less emphasis on winning? 2) the potential psychological risks / costs of eg dance / ballet?
Any material that relates to the real decisions you're making as you raise your daughter would be very helpful. No other bloggers I read discuss this topic.
Rec leagues probably a good thing, especially if its in a sport which is clearly casual and doesn't have a serious competitive pipeline at the college level (like basketball, athletics, etc.)
Ballet is a more complex one - I'll copy my comment from above:
"Re. ballet - depends on the seriousness of the school. If it's a serious pipeline to a professional career I'd be pretty worried for my daughter, for the reasons outlined in the piece. I love ballet, but the road for professionals is a gruelling and often vulnerable one. If it's just a nice local school which your daughter enjoys then no problem"
I have a 19 yo daughter who went to a performing arts school and played clarinet. I was always super glad she never showed interest in sports of any kind.
It’s my belief that ANYTHING taken to the extreme or elite level is bad for most people.
Up until this year, my daughter loved basketball. When school let out, she came to me, afraid to say she didn't want to play basketball anymore. Since I'm not the parent who pushed my children into sports, I told her that was okay, but she had to find something physical to do. I want her to enjoy what she does.
There was a time when women got scholarships for homemaking, DECA, and showing that they could take care of a family. Sports was the last thing on any woman's mind.
I share these same thoughts. I don’t push my girls at all into competitive sports. In fact, from the earliest age they quite hate competitive sports. They like to dribble a basketball, but not when someone else is trying to take it.
I want them to do things and I take inspiration from thinking “what would the daughters from Pride and Prejudice be doing?”
We do art classes, teach cooking at home, and read classic books as a family. We still want them to be active, so they participate in swim practices (but don’t compete) and they do rock climbing for fun. Much happier young ladies since we stopped pushing competition!
ETA: I have probably thought about this too much but it has occurred to me that Elizabeth Bennet probably injected some much needed robustness to the Darcy bloodlines. The fashion then, IIRC, among the very wealthy was for women to avoid exercise. I believe at that time maternal mortality was higher among the rich vs. middle class women, very possibly due to cultural practices like these.
Very interesting. Experienced this playing all the competitive sports as a girl growing up in my brother’s athletic shadow. Sports were a big deal in our little town and it was expected of me to also compete although I didn’t have the talent or the drive to excel. It was fun playing soccer when we were kids and the co-ed games weren’t serious, just running around and eating oranges, before the boys shot past us in strength and skill and we all (rightly) moved on to separate leagues. As we got older, it was non stop drama, both coaches (especially the females) and players. Ugh. I wasted so much time and energy enmeshed in these unnatural and stressful dynamics without ever questioning it, but I did quit all team sports at 17. I am a fit and active adult, but exercise is healthy and enjoyable for me now. Years ago, when my daughter tried volleyball and hated it, I let her quit mid season and have never regretted that.
Also anecdotally, I did grow up with a couple girls who would continue and excel in sports throughout college. One went on to a collegiate coaching career, married another coach, never had children. The other has been continually plagued by injuries and multiple surgeries as an adult.
Thanks for covering this under the radar topic Johann. My wife and I have discussed our daughters in sports for a while now and have settled in line with your thoughts. We expect pushback from family as both my girls grandmothers were D1 university athletes in the early Title 9 years and an Aunt was recently a D2 athlete.
I would suggest looking into conservative alternatives to Girl Scouts. But realize you do want a troop that is active. Volunteer work, crafting, camping, and outdoor activities, all with a group of girls to befriend.
I have first hand experience of the deleterious impact of competitive female sports. My sister played a sport for a top college in the US and I dated several other competitor female athletes at the top collegiate level in the US (D1). All faced pressure to develop an eating disorder and a few succumbed. Many of those women had issues with their menstrual cycle and later issues with conceiving. Another aspect that you don’t cover here (perhaps it’s stronger in the US), is the pressure to skip church/mass. My parents and sister routinely skipped church during her high school years because they were off at travel tournaments. This sets a bad precedent for the child (and the other children in the family) as it implicitly places organized sports at the top of the family value hierarchy or at least places it above religion.
I want my daughter to be healthy and fit, but at a level commensurate with her sex and design.
I should have remembered the church aspect (this happened to me when I used to compete). Thanks RDS - hope you're well
Thank you for this point about skipping church. I do worry about that pressure to skip church for my young son. Why don’t more sports leagues allow kids to go to church and rest?
Because Christians are soft and won’t put up a fight. They’d rather go along to get along and play Sunday morning instead of forfeiting or not showing up
I'm curious: would you discourage a son from competitive sports if it meant he had to skip religious services to attend practice or games?
We aren’t skipping church to do organized sports. Whether for sons or daughters. We don’t miss church unless we are ill.
When my youngest daughter was in grade school (early 1980s) the gym teacher who had a side business training gymnasts, saw potential in her and approached me about letting her join his team. But I knew the grueling devotion that required because my oldest daughter's best friend had been doing gymnastic competition for her entire youth. She was at the gym at 5 am working out before school and gone every weekend to meets. To what end?
I told him that I knew she was limber but she was already big for her age and that all the work she would put in would get her nowhere because female gymnasts are usually of small stature. He didn't like my rejection but I signed her up in Camp Fire Girls where she learned all kinds of skills and once she was in middle school she tried out for cheerleading and her agility was put to good use. I never regretted that decision.
That was brave, well done. Thanks Meemanator
I dropped out of competitive sports at 16 because of girl drama and a Coach who we were sure had a thing for a young lady who used that to her advantage and the disadvantage of the rest of us. Curiously, I became more focused on fitness when I stopped sports and just worked out. Then I coaches children’s swim team. My sister stopped team sports and focused on equestrian training and golf. We were both happier than our peers.
Excellent to hear. People think that competitive sports is amazing for girls because they compare it to doing nothing, which is obviously deeply unnatural and unhealthy in the other direction. Thanks Haley
And probably happier than your peers who did no sport at all, too! Physical activity is a known protective factor and even treatment for depression.
Yes definitely. My dad was in the army for years so physical fitness was very important and upheld as virtue in our home, but he wasn’t a competitive athlete so that aspect was never pushed. Our parents were just happy if we were staying active and having fun. When it stopped being fun they didn’t mind us leaving. In fact, my sister’s most competitive thing in her teen years was showing animals in 4-H. That form of competition was much more mentally stimulating and gave her skills pertinent to adulthood
I sent this to a friend who played softball in college at a Division 1 school (that’s a very big deal here in the US). She has a daughter now and is wary of competitive sports for her girl, though she does push her girl to be active through swimming, golf, tennis and simply playing outside. She loved this article!
She also credits her college sport career with giving her back her faith. Playing ball at that level was stressful and the angst she felt forced her to come to terms with her purpose. She realized sport was not her life’s work. And Faith was the only thing that helped her accept that. She’s now a devout Christian and a wonderful mother, wife and school teacher
Awesome.
I anticipate you'll get some pushback on this one!!
The last part of this piece I think is really key. Our lives default to being super sedentary without deliberately doing otherwise, and athletics seems like an "easy" way to counter that. My boys have benefitted hugely from competitive sports, though even there we avoid the travel leagues and super regimented and adult controlled style of play, which doesn't even seem fun. But my daughters, who are younger, are completely uninterested, though they still like doing things like playing around in the woods, jumping rope, and they might play a pickup game or two if they have the opportunity. But the play is just different when it's both boys and girls even in a neighborhood game.
I wonder if, in girls' sports, if it's that girls who are prone to those sorts of maladaptive behaviors who end up playing at the most competitive levels. I run, but not competitively, and I've always taken breaks around babies. It's annoying to be slower again when I pick it back up but I've never suffered major injuries or problems like elite female athletes do, and the mental health benefit is substantial as is the general physical activity.
(I think I might even argue that a lot of this might even apply to boys and men at the most elite levels in terms of stress, injury, work/life balance. I'm also, to be very frank, not a huge fan of spectator sports in general - I think there are some benefits but very possibly outweighed by drawbacks.)
This is probably the crux of the issue, competitive sports is not by itself bad, but the pressure to be at the very top of your group can be.
Thanks for the comprehensive comment Penguin Mom. I'm actually glad for any pushback on this one, I'm still consolidating my thoughts on the issue and the criticism is helpful
I was thinking it through as I wrote my comment, too, as well as reading the other comments. I'm not sure yet, but I think I'm landing on the idea that hyper competitive sports are probably bad for both boys and girls, but it's entirely possible that the negative effects are more obvious for girls - not because girls are defective or all psychotic or whatever, but because girls are more vulnerable. I think this applies to other areas too in modern culture too so seeing it through that framework isn't novel for me.
I'm not sure what it is like over in the UK, but the ramped-up pressure for girls to compete in the US was largely tied to higher education scholarship money.
How do you balance these negative effects against the positive effects of physical strength and fitness? Competitive sports are a powerful driver for an active lifestyle and developing a strong and healthy body. Is there a way to hit the sweet spot of being engaged in physical activities like sports without being so deep into it that it hurts you?
I think often about combat sports. I'm a huge supporter of martial arts and combat sports as a part of every man's development, but I wouldn't want to, nor would I want my son to aspire to be a professional boxer. It's just not worth the brain damage and I don't believe cutting weight is healthy. I do however think it's good to be an enthusiastic hobbyist or even an amateur competitor and I would also encourage my daughters to know how to fight.
I do BJJ and boxing padwork for the reasons you mention, with relatively little striking sparring.
I think the sweet spot is finding a fun, physical recreational activity outside of a competitive pipeline.
Yeah I think we both see the competitive pipeline as the source of the danger
Honestly, the biggest driver for an active lifestyle for children, is watching you, their parent, have an active lifestyle. Children mimic what they see. If mom and dad don’t stay physically active then guess what? Neither do the kids. Sports has nothing to do with it.
I agree that your influence as the parent is supreme, and that they seek to emulate you. I further agree that this will carry them longer than experience in organized athletics. “Nothing“ might be overstating yet, and I think there are ways to participate even in competitive pipelines without getting sucked into it, as long as you help them keep their priorities straight
Honestly, sports should never be a ‘professional’ endeavour for anyone., male or female. It should be something that is for amateurs (for those who love it) who have a life outside it. The second any serious money is involved, the athletes become objects to use and discard when they break. You can still have excellence, ranked competitions and leagues, but none of the profiteering and gambling profiteering that ends up hurting the athletes and audiences alike.
Basically feel the same.
None of my three children, girl, boy, boy, now in their thirties, were competitive athletes. Those health stats about female athletes are scary. But, as well, one child's drive to excel at a sport can dominate a family to ill effect. Travel teams on the weekend and uneven attention.
Quite so!
💯
My sister said the same thing to me a while back regarding an argument over young sheldon (when Missy wanted to join the baseball team and the coach laughed and said "girls don't play baseball"), she said "that coach is right". I ultimately accepted that my sister must be right, due to her superior rhetoric. But now I think I've properly realized why.
I wonder where Ballet falls into? I suppose it's less competitive and more artistic, though it still comes with the ED, the SA and the loss of menstruation.
Re. ballet - depends on the seriousness of the school. If it's a serious pipeline to a professional career I'd be pretty worried for my daughter, for the reasons outlined in the piece. I love ballet, but the road for professionals is a gruelling and often vulnerable one. If it's just a nice local school which your daughter enjoys then no problem
It's me that enjoys it! And have benefited from it for many years.
Professional ballet, at the extreme, for some, does come with all those same costs as elite sports but amateur and hobby ballet which is increasingly popular with girls and women of literally all ages really doesn't. It's brilliant for both the body and the mind. It's tougher than tough and very feminine. I'd highly recommend it.
Where does one find hobby ballet classes?
I love the strength, postural work, and femininity for myself (empty-nester, so kids are grown), but don’t know where to look.
That may depend where in the world you are. Google "Adult ballet" and see what you find.
Thanks, Rachel. I found Ballet Études just a few miles from my house with adult classes that fit both my schedule and my budget.
Very helpful piece--I was completely unaware of the evidence for negative effects of competitive sports on women, but now having heard it I believe it. I have a young daughter approaching school age and me default plan was to focus on competitive sports because I enjoyed / received so much from them as a child. But I appreciate how the effects could be different for boys vs girls.
Any thoughts on: 1) "rec league" sports that place less emphasis on winning? 2) the potential psychological risks / costs of eg dance / ballet?
Any material that relates to the real decisions you're making as you raise your daughter would be very helpful. No other bloggers I read discuss this topic.
Rec leagues probably a good thing, especially if its in a sport which is clearly casual and doesn't have a serious competitive pipeline at the college level (like basketball, athletics, etc.)
Ballet is a more complex one - I'll copy my comment from above:
"Re. ballet - depends on the seriousness of the school. If it's a serious pipeline to a professional career I'd be pretty worried for my daughter, for the reasons outlined in the piece. I love ballet, but the road for professionals is a gruelling and often vulnerable one. If it's just a nice local school which your daughter enjoys then no problem"
I have a 19 yo daughter who went to a performing arts school and played clarinet. I was always super glad she never showed interest in sports of any kind.
It’s my belief that ANYTHING taken to the extreme or elite level is bad for most people.
Up until this year, my daughter loved basketball. When school let out, she came to me, afraid to say she didn't want to play basketball anymore. Since I'm not the parent who pushed my children into sports, I told her that was okay, but she had to find something physical to do. I want her to enjoy what she does.
There was a time when women got scholarships for homemaking, DECA, and showing that they could take care of a family. Sports was the last thing on any woman's mind.
Thanks Joseph. Just try and help her find some other wholesome and active activities
I share these same thoughts. I don’t push my girls at all into competitive sports. In fact, from the earliest age they quite hate competitive sports. They like to dribble a basketball, but not when someone else is trying to take it.
I want them to do things and I take inspiration from thinking “what would the daughters from Pride and Prejudice be doing?”
We do art classes, teach cooking at home, and read classic books as a family. We still want them to be active, so they participate in swim practices (but don’t compete) and they do rock climbing for fun. Much happier young ladies since we stopped pushing competition!
Difficult to imagine Elizabeth Bennet doing basketball drills
She was, however, an excellent walker!
ETA: I have probably thought about this too much but it has occurred to me that Elizabeth Bennet probably injected some much needed robustness to the Darcy bloodlines. The fashion then, IIRC, among the very wealthy was for women to avoid exercise. I believe at that time maternal mortality was higher among the rich vs. middle class women, very possibly due to cultural practices like these.
Difficult to imagine her rock climbing too, but we’re allowed some amount of 21st century interests.
Very interesting. Experienced this playing all the competitive sports as a girl growing up in my brother’s athletic shadow. Sports were a big deal in our little town and it was expected of me to also compete although I didn’t have the talent or the drive to excel. It was fun playing soccer when we were kids and the co-ed games weren’t serious, just running around and eating oranges, before the boys shot past us in strength and skill and we all (rightly) moved on to separate leagues. As we got older, it was non stop drama, both coaches (especially the females) and players. Ugh. I wasted so much time and energy enmeshed in these unnatural and stressful dynamics without ever questioning it, but I did quit all team sports at 17. I am a fit and active adult, but exercise is healthy and enjoyable for me now. Years ago, when my daughter tried volleyball and hated it, I let her quit mid season and have never regretted that.
Also anecdotally, I did grow up with a couple girls who would continue and excel in sports throughout college. One went on to a collegiate coaching career, married another coach, never had children. The other has been continually plagued by injuries and multiple surgeries as an adult.
Thanks for covering this under the radar topic Johann. My wife and I have discussed our daughters in sports for a while now and have settled in line with your thoughts. We expect pushback from family as both my girls grandmothers were D1 university athletes in the early Title 9 years and an Aunt was recently a D2 athlete.
Stud family! Thank you
I would suggest looking into conservative alternatives to Girl Scouts. But realize you do want a troop that is active. Volunteer work, crafting, camping, and outdoor activities, all with a group of girls to befriend.
Don’t do Girl Scouts they are woke.