Complaining parents - When did this trend start?

I tend to agree with the comment that more money is being spent. Spent by parents, on their kids -- who are just kids like every other generation was "just kids," when we were little -- and those parents want some kind of assurance and/or validation that their money is being well-spent.

I have no doubt I'd be upset, too, if I spent $2,000 for my kid to join a travel ball team, and he never got to play.

Which is why I'd never spend $2,000 for my kid to join a travel ball team. That's fucking ludicrous. If you're good enough to get drafted/scholarship, you'll get one.

 

I'll never get one if you don't put my name in the paper and expose me to college scouts, buck.

 

I don't know about that. From talking to old heads in the business, they rarely got calls from bitching parents in the 1970s. But it's commonplace now.

 

Parents are trying to get their kids noticed in the paper so they get college scholarships.

Boom! Little Johnny has his D1 football scholarship and Mom and Dad don't have to pay for his school!

Simple? OK, maybe it's not that simple. What isn't simple is trying to drill home the fact only 1 percent of athletes eventually go on to play in college. Some parents think you failed as a person if you didn't drill the fact home their son/daughter is so special. It's like we're supposed to be their recruiter instead of a reporter.

Most parents I deal with in my job are quite pleasant. I consider myself lucky. I know others aren't so fortunate.

 

No way anyone in my grandfathers generation called the paper and complained. No way.

They might have bitched some at home or even to their buddies, but there is just no way.

I think JR nailed it with the overreaction, for lack of a better term, of boomer parents to their own parents' lack of involvement in their lives. Pendulum swung the other way, with a vengeance.

 

I've often wondered about this myself, if this is a recent phenomenon or if it's always been like this and we're only more aware of it because we're in this line of work.
I'm sure Little League parents have been around longer than Little League.
I've also had grandparents complain and make suggestions from time to time and sometimes the kids themselves (though I don't know if they're doing it of their volition or if their parents feel the argument would have more credibility of the kid made it himself or herself).

 

i think you hit it on the head early on in this discussion.

 

Today (Saturday), the first paper filled with high school football coverage, nearly always produces a plethora of bitching parents who leave voice mails... I'm dreading checking my messages when I get back into the office tonight.

Heck, we should be taken to task... we only staffed 11 games. (blue font needed)

 

It would make a great photo feature, don't you think?

 

Graduated from college in '73 and spent my first three years on newside doing cops/courts. Covered some pretty sensational crime stuff and never got a letter or call from anyone.

Grew tired of crime and grabbed a sports opening, thinking "Games, fun, this is going to be great." Very first sports story I wrote was about a high school girls' volleyball tournament. Wrote something that seemed totally innocuous to me, but it got numerous calls and letters from pissed-off parents. That should have been a big hint about what was to come.

I've got a personal theory that the dawning of the Internet/radio talk-show age has helped lead to an increased lack of civility. People get used to spewing anonymous shit on message boards and talk shows and feel emboldened. (So believes GuessWho, anyway 8)).

 

Ya know, JR, that's an excellent point about parents and their students.

I have been teaching high school for the last 16 years, and while it existed when I started, it has gotten worse and worse. This is at the high school level, and I know it's bad in college. I tend to teach the lower-level kids, because it's the Honors' students parents who make the majority of the calls challenging grades and teachers.

But . . . I have done National Honor Society for the last 10 or so years, and hoo-boy, can that get nasty. "Yes, we know he went in the guidance counselor's office and took the scholarship forms from the pile on her desk, but he *needed* them, and he's a good kid, and he has worked hard."

His younger brother turned out to be one of the best kids we ever had.

 

It's soccer's fault.