Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a second-generation Asian American. TBH, I find the white obsession with sports equally as annoying as the FOB Asian obsession with academics. Kids need as much unstructured time as possible, spent alone or with friends and family, ideally in nature. Period.

I'm with you on this. I can't document how it will make my kids the most successful in their careers, but I guess that's not my primary goal for their childhoods.

Anonymous wrote:I am a second-generation Asian American. TBH, I find the white obsession with sports equally as annoying as the FOB Asian obsession with academics. Kids need as much unstructured time as possible, spent alone or with friends and family, ideally in nature. Period.

Anonymous wrote:I’m a first gen Asian immigrant and have a middle schooler and elementary schooler. I grew up in Asia and moved here as an adult. In the course of raising my kids, I’ ve gotten to know people from various ethnicity and races. My immigrant friends from India, china, Korea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ghana all have one thing in common in that doing well academically is valued. Some of these cultures values sports but it’s only pursued seriously if the child has a tremendous level of motivation and talent. Otherwise, sports is something you do for fun and stay active. We’re unlikely to spend $$ and time pursuing travel sports or private coaching etc for an average kid.
As I interact with white colleagues, especially at work, their life revolves around sports. They coach multiple kids teams, 2 year olds are ice rinks over the weekend learning to skate. The level of rigor and commitment amazed me.
I ask this from a place of curiosity and not judgement - why is the cultural importance of sports higher than academics in the American society? I mean, an above average soccer player has zero prospects in soccer while an above average engineer can make 6 digits right out of school. Can you help me understand?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Google is your friend. Start with articles like these, go to the original research and then to the citations:

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/being-a-team-player-why-college-athletes-succeed-in-business

This article is from this year but the research has been available for years. There are more out there. Also plenty of articles simply linking career and sports success.

The research for this particular article shows that team sports players admitted with lower gpas than average outperform peers. (In contrast, individual players of wealthy sports, indicating a wealthy background, only leads to a slight career advantage).

Your link is about college sports. The vast majority of kids playing sports in elementary school (this forum) won’t make it that far in their chosen sport.

It’s interesting, but I do wonder if the crop of kids who become collegiate athletes is fundamentally different. Your take away may be overly broad.

Anonymous wrote:I send my kids to Jewish day school and there is no obsession over sports. Focus is very much on academics. Perhaps our cultures have that in common!

In public schools, sports are very competitive and taken very seriously. Not a bad thing, just different cultures. Might also be a factor that the public schools are bigger, there is a greater number of talented athletes and making a team is more competitive.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a first gen Asian immigrant and have a middle schooler and elementary schooler. I grew up in Asia and moved here as an adult. In the course of raising my kids, I’ ve gotten to know people from various ethnicity and races. My immigrant friends from India, china, Korea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ghana all have one thing in common in that doing well academically is valued. Some of these cultures values sports but it’s only pursued seriously if the child has a tremendous level of motivation and talent. Otherwise, sports is something you do for fun and stay active. We’re unlikely to spend $$ and time pursuing travel sports or private coaching etc for an average kid.
As I interact with white colleagues, especially at work, their life revolves around sports. They coach multiple kids teams, 2 year olds are ice rinks over the weekend learning to skate. The level of rigor and commitment amazed me.
I ask this from a place of curiosity and not judgement - why is the cultural importance of sports higher than academics in the American society? I mean, an above average soccer player has zero prospects in soccer while an above average engineer can make 6 digits right out of school. Can you help me understand?

1. Because having your children grind their childhoods away solely on academics is not appealing to most white parents.
2. Sports are social and team oriented, and thus teach a different set of skills/lesson to children. It’s not wasted time, you learn a lot, for instance about dedication, teamwork, and responding to adversity.
3. A lot of the kids who are heavy into sports are also quite successful academically. As in all things, there comes a point of diminishing returns where there isn’t that much incremental benefit to the next hour of study, so some of this time is more efficiently used elsewhere.
4. Most parents who are involved in travel sports understand that it’s not likely to be going anywhere. While there are certainly some pathological exceptions, generally it’s driven by kids who really love a particular sport but need a higher level of competition that is available in local rec leagues.