Children do not need Extra-Curricular Activities

The awful phenomenon of children being asked by adults what their activities are.

I read an article on Substack yesterday which I now cannot find, but it concerned social missteps that people can fall into when visiting England, or dealing with the English. You will never be told that you have committed a social disaster as that is not the English way; rather, you will be spoken about when people have departed at the end of the evening.

One of the mistakes mentioned was immediately asking what someone does for a living. What is your job, goes the line, and then you are expected to defend yourself to your questioner. This question is used so as to ascertain your social standing. It is a primary tool in societies boasting of not having a class system. The class system exists, however, and where you stand on it is based on how much money you make. Which is rather tacky, or without class, and which is why it is considered a social faux pas in England.

(Interestingly enough, in Italy where I currently live, this question almost never gets asked in a social setting. There are people whom I have known for years who I still don’t know what they do for a living).

So the question is used to determine your social standing; people want to be able to put you in a box and then treat you accordingly. But in countries like the USA there is a new and altogether more disturbing development of this phenomenon that is seeing children swept up in the ghastly push for a class system without a class system.

Children are now being asked by adults what their activities are. In other words, what sports do they play and at what level? What musical instruments do they study? What languages are they learning, oh sorry, this is the USA, Americans don’t learn other languages. Children are no longer just children; they have to be able to justify their social standing to adults.

But it is mostly a form of social control regarding family size. The pressure to conform to social expectations and provide an almost endless stream of extra-curricular activities for children has the intended side effect of keeping family sizes small. These activities are time consuming not just for the children, but most importantly for the parents. Weekends are no longer time for relaxation with the family, and enjoyment of time spent together. Instead they are consumed with running around shuttling the children from one activity to another. And there is the cost of the activities. This places an additional financial burden on already struggling families, but they feel that they must provide the activities for the children or they will be classed as bad parents.

In this way, parents balk at having more than two children as the cost in time and money is simply too high. They cannot keep up and so they limit themselves to one or two children at most, just as long as they can beam with pride at how well little Sofia is doing at rollerblade figure skating. And Sofia is now expected to respond accordingly when adults interrogate her on her extra-curriculum activities. And she will no doubt proudly do so, at length and at great detail.

The additional and most insidious effect of all of this is that the God given order of the family is inverted. Instead of the father being the head of the family, the children are the de facto leaders. The family revolves around the children’s activities. I know families where the father would like to move the family to the country but is waiting to see if little Johnny will finally lose interest in whatever sport he is playing that can only be done in the city. And so they wait and wait, but Johnny keeps playing and so they must defer to his wishes as the child rules the roost.

The only solution to this trap is to not play the game at all. Children do not need these activities to thrive, they can do perfectly well without them. That is not to say that they shouldn’t play a musical instrument or be involved in sports, but when it becomes unbalanced in this manner then it has a detrimental effect.

I wonder how that English chap would react to a question along the lines of what are his children’s activities directed at the children themselves. I feel that the laconic stiff English upper lip would finally meet its match, and that the English proclivity for not calling out a social faux pas would finally be swiftly and terribly broken.