The solution to the problems your son is likely to face in sports is pobably not to keep him from playing, but to avoid reinforcing unhealthy gender stereotypes while providing him healthy ways through sports to channel aggressive impulses. If you are raising a boy, here are some good steps thrat I recommend you may want to take:
Steven Rhoades argues in his book, Taking Sex Differences Seriously, that "during the teenage years ... perhaps the most effective way to channel the aggressive tendencies of males is via participation in sports." If you have an aggressive, competitive son, encourage him to play a contact sport like football, ice hockey, wrestling or lacrosse "Channeling your young son's aggressive impulses into football and soccer may be a better choice - just in terms of his physical health - than almost any indoor recreational activity you can name," advises Dr. Sax. "The best way to raise your son to be a man who is caring and nurturing is let him first be a boy."
The "assumption that all male athletes benefit from a certain (male) coaching style is as ridiculous as the notion that all females respond better to a kinder, gentler, nicer coaching style," says Dr. Ellen Staurowsky, Associate Professor of Sports Studies at Ithaca College, former Director of Athletics at William Smith College and head coach of men's soccer at Daniel Webster College. "Different athletes respond in different ways depending on who they are, what their goals are, and what motivates them. And good coaches know how to tap into those differences and adjust accordingly."
Coaches of girls' teams generally provide lots of positive encouragement, avoid insulting players when they make mistakes, compliment them when they do well and try their best, are more inclined to de-emphasize winning and believe sports are all about having fun and making friends and about being nurturing.
Yet most coaches of boys' teams don't do the same thing. As a fourteen year old girl told a California newspaper, it is a myth that all boys "are 'macho' enough to handle criticism, whereas girls might ‘break down and cry.' ... [B]oys only act macho because ... [w]e raise them to be ‘real men', to ‘suck it up' and not show emotion. It is such a shame that we do not let them live up to their potential for growing into sensitive, caring men" by reinforcing gender stereotypes in the way they are coached.
At the same time let your son know that he does not need to play sports, particularly aggressive, contact sports, in order to prove his masculinity and heterosexuality [1]. He needs to know that he shouldn't let a sense of honor and duty to the team lead him to do harmful things to himself (like playing through pain, failing to report concussion signs or symptoms [2], or using performance-enhancing drugs [3], or participating in violent hazing rituals [4]) in the name of the team.
As Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson note in their book, Raising Cain, "Very few boys or men are tall, handsome, athletic, successful with women, endlessly virile, and physically fearless. ...Boys suffer from a too-narrow definition of masculinity, and it is time to reexamine that message... We have to teach boys that there are many ways to become a man; that there are many ways to be brave, to be a good father, to be loving and strong and successful. We need to celebrate the natural creativity and risk taking of boys, their energy, and their boldness. We need to praise the artist and the entertainer, the missionary and the athlete, the soldier and the male nurse, the store owner and the round-the-world sailor, the teacher and the CEO. There are many ways for a boy to make a contribution in this life."
Because the competitive drive of a male athlete is more likely to be expressed in confrontational ways than a girl's, teach your son healthy ways to deal with physical and emotional pain, to respect his body, limit risk-taking and learn appropriate ways to resolve conflicts in a non-violent way. Teach your son that on-the-field aggression does not excuse off-the-field aggression [5].
As Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson recommend in their book, Raising Cain, "boys need to be encouraged to initiate friendships, maintain them, and experience the conflicts that arise in male friendships from different levels of athletic skill, from teasing, and from competition for the attention of girls. Too often boys lack both the resources and the will to resolve those conflicts and preserve friendships."
If your son violates no-drinking rules, don't condone such behavior by looking the other way based on a belief that because being on the team is important to his self-esteem, suspension from the team is too high a price to pay. (I recall hearing that a father of one of my son's teammates had told his son, who vomited at a school dance after drinking, to say that he had a stomach virus to avoid being suspended from the team). Whatever you do, don't promote alcohol abuse by your son by letting him and his friends drink at your home by rationalizing that it will keep him from drinking and driving.
If you have a son (or daughter, for that matter) who is excelling athletically, don't allow his school to treat him differently, such as by lowering academic standards to enable him to participate, or by bending or ignoring team or league rules. Have the courage to uphold your own values, even if the school is willing to look the other way. If the school won't suspend him, you can.
Boys need to be able to play with girls and respect them as athletes in order to develop non-sexist attitudes they can carry into adulthood. Instead of being afraid if you let your son compete against girls that he might lose, you should be teaching a different lesson: girls and boys can and should be as equal in sports as they are in other areas of life. You should help your son overcome the feeling that the aggression of female athletes is threatening: it is only threatening because it threatens gender stereotypes.
Much of the pressure to conform to a hyper-masculine gender stereotype undoubtedly comes from some fathers, who, as a general rule, are more likely than mothers to go too far and emotionally abuse their children, particularly their sons. Unlike a good grade that a child gets in school, which is private, your son's success or failure in sports is public and on display for all to see. As William Pollack observed in From Boys to Men, "It is an undeniable fact - which mothers have to accept and deal with - that a lot of the pressure on kids comes from ‘over involved dads,' who prowl the sidelines at games, screaming at their children to run faster or berating the coach for not playing their child enough."
Observes Harvard's Dr. Roberto Olivardia, coauthor of The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession: "I think a lot of fathers are threatened that if their sons aren't doing well, it's somehow a poor reflection on them. They may say, ‘Don't be a wimp.' ‘Hit the ball.' Or - and I've heard fathers say this many times at baseball games - ‘You throw like a girl.' And that is the most shaming thing that a boy can be told."
As my old high school English teacher and long-time Boston Globe sportswriter, Tony Chamberlain, recently wrote, "Fathers of young children often get so intense about their children acquiring sports skills of dubious future value that they often lose the big picture. ... Whether it's throwing a baseball, stopping a pond hockey puck, taking a jump shot, or making a slalom turn through the gates, fathers can't resist going at it much too early." (Andre Agassi's father is a classic example: when his son was an infant, he made a makeshift mobile of tennis balls and hung it over his crib!). Even Tony fell victim to the male propensity for being so intense about teaching their children about sports that they go overboard, admitting that, in teaching his son fishing and sailing, he was a "little obnoxious," to the point where he would drill his son about things that he would most likely have picked up "naturally when they go fishing a few times." As Tony wryly observed, "Leave it to a dad to turn everything fun into a drill."
Help our husband keep his ego or hormones from getting the better of him. You don't want him to be like the father, who after attending his twelve year old son's first hockey game (a one-goal loss), saw another father charge into the locker room, yank his son up off the bench and yell, "You fucking son of a bitch; if you'd hit that guy against the wall you wouldn't have lost the game."
Boys these days pretty much expect to hear a man screaming and hollering at them. They don't expect it from moms, who they expect to nurture and protect them. The sad fact is that some mothers, unfortunately, place too much pressure on their children (Indeed, in a study of American athletes preparing for the 1988 Olympic Games, more than a third of the athletes admitted suffering from excessive pressure from their mother versus only one in four from their father).
Don't make the mistake of putting too much pressure on your son. As Olympic snowboarding gold medalist Shaun White told The Washington Post before the 2006 Turin Games, "The reason I stopped playing soccer was because of soccer moms. I showed up late for a game, and this mom snapped [at] me. She screamed, ‘You go out there and score!' Someone else's mom screams at you, you're eleven. It's pretty intimidating."
Make a point, like Shaun's mom, Cathy, of not putting pressure on your son. As Cathy told me several years ago, "I don't want to push him. If anything, I hold him back because I don't want him to get hurt." The worst thing that can happen is for your son, like Shaun White, to become a fan of dads just because they are "more relaxed."
Links:
[1] https://mail.momsteam.com/node/1974
[2] https://mail.momsteam.com/node/149
[3] https://mail.momsteam.com/node/595
[4] https://mail.momsteam.com/node/407
[5] https://mail.momsteam.com/node/1121