It's all for the Kids: Gender, Families, and Youth Sports (review)

Over the past several years, Michael Messner has established himself among the two or three most perceptive scholars on the sociology of American sports. A feminist, Messner has shown sensitivity to issues of power and the ways in which sports at various levels affect attitudes and behavior. His new book extends these analyses by examining the intersection between gender, coaching, and community in American youth sports—soccer and baseball/softball—in the suburbs of Pasadena, California. As both a data collector and participant observer over seven years, Messner provides provocative insights into the ways that in the post-Title IX era gender dynamics, with most coaching and administrative responsibilities assumed by men and "team mom" supportive roles assumed by women, hinder rather than facilitate gender equity.

The book is a treat in the way that it methodically reviews the "pipeline" of how coaches and team moms are recruited, the differing experiences of male and female coaches—a gender-sorting process that distinguishes between "kid knowledge" and "sports knowledge"—, and the ways in which gender roles of adults in suburban Pasadena youth sports reflect broader inequalities that exist in communities. Messner adapts from the scholarship of others and divides concepts into categories that make his analysis understandable to experts and lay readers alike. He identifies, for example, four trends that explain the recent surge in youth sports participation, four styles of coaching, three "shifts" in a mother's daily life, and more. Perhaps most provocatively, Messner asserts that the American middle-class, suburban ideology is dominated by a "soft essentialism," whereby women in post-feminist and society believe that they have choices in their career and family roles when in fact a culturally constructed gendered belief system still views husbands' careers as primary while defining household and child-raising responsibilities, at which men are considered inept, as women's "natural" talents. Women are not involuntarily confined to domestic roles; rather, they believe that they choose such roles freely because they are best for the kids. Thus, youth league coaching roles mirror what Messner calls the "hegemonic work family form."

Messner alludes to the phrase "it's all for the kids" is "mildly sarcastic," evoking self-conscious chortles from adult volunteers. But he does not address the actual irony of the book's title. The complex organized activity of soccer and baseball leagues exists because parents assume that their children cannot and should not do things for themselves, and Messner's interviews and vignettes reveal that the coaching and support functions satisfy adult needs as much as they assist the kids. There are no children's voices in the analysis, no sense of whether or not a team mom's fussing over snacks or a "drill sergeant" coach is appreciated or resented. Messner aptly points out how concerns over safety drive adult-supervised sports today, but there was a time, not so long ago and no safer, when youngster would have been embarrassed if their parents showed up at a game that kids considered to be an independent activity free from an adult's intrusive eyes. The fact that adults feel that they must take control of this activity suggests that more than gender dynamics are involved.