Complaining parents - When did this trend start?

[zeke12]

Get some perspective, please.This didn't start with baby boomers. It's been going on since kids started playing organized sports. And it will never end.

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.

 

[Smallpotatoes]

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).

 

[Tom Petty]

I would imagine it started around the same time that mid-sized papers made the move to focus more on local. Once the parents got a bite of earnest coverage, they wanted more.

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

 

[Colton]

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)

 

[DGRollins]

I've been thinking a lot about this recently.

It started when I was talking with my father and he was asked about my biggest headache at work. When I told him about how parents expect coverage like it's included in the Bill of Rights, he was shocked. He couldn't believe parents did that.

I probably sound a bit like Bobby Knight here, but I think it's an outgrowth of the "our kids can do no wrong" belief that's become so common in parents today.

The parents who kvetch because you don't send a reporter to cover Optimist Club junior sheep tossing are probably the same ones who ream the coach for not starting their budding Jim Thorps or confront the teacher because they're obviously not motivating Johnny's glue-eating ass.

I wouldn't mind covering the sheep tossing, actually.

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

 

[GuessWho]

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 **** on message boards and talk shows and feel emboldened. (So believes GuessWho, anyway 8)).

 

[BillyT]

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.

 

[slappy4428]

It's soccer's fault.

 

[JR]

Some say this phenomena started in Canada back in the early to mid 60's (I think that's about right) when the Canadian Hockey Association did an ad campaign with the slogan, "Take, Don't Send Your Boy to the Rink".

As I said, up until then, kids played hockey, parents would drive, may or may not stay for the games, pick their kids up, ask how they did, and that was about it.

The CHA started a guilt campaign.

Back then of course girls didn't play hockey but I don't think I knew a single kid who didn't play--at least until they were 13 or so.

 

[wickedwritah]

When I was a kid, my mom took me to the games and stayed just because she was uberprotective. I remember my dad going to a game of mine exactly once -- and it was a minor miracle.

This is all about scholarships. Never happens in the poorer neighborhoods or communities. You'd figure those are the parents who could use some pub and a scholarship to get their kids into college, but no.

In the past 10 years, even, you've seen it get so much worse. When I was 18, you almost never would've seen parents accompanying kids to their college classes or pick up the phone to the professor.

Makes me wonder if these kids are gonna be sick and tired of the doting, and maybe they'll rebel and not have kids at all.

 

[writing irish]

When I was playing Little League, if someone from the local newspaper had shown up to cover the game, my teammates and I would have thought that they were out of their ****ing mind. And at that time, we lived in a small city.

I find all the emphasis on the competitive aspect of youth sports- which are supposed to be about fun, health and character development- to be utterly revolting. We had one- just one- psycho parent on my Little League team. Now, I'm wondering if that personality type isn't the norm.

It's bad enough that teenagers almost never make the paper except when they break the law or play sports. Except for the occasional clutch-and-grab award photo, newspapers don't pay attention to the academic achievements of teenagers. Now little children are being taught that their 8-u baseball team is more important than what happens at school. That's the message we send when we play up the former and ignore the latter. Terrible message.

And the only parents who stayed to watch Little League practice on my team were the occasional grandparents.

 

[daemon]

Great discussion.

There's no question it's a sociological trend.

Case in point: I could count on one hand the number of times a minority parent has called to ***** about their child.

I covered high school sports in ultra-rich areas, and lower-middle class/poor areas. Rarely did I get calls from the lower-middle class/poor areas.

If you were to take a survey of the race and income level of every one who calls a sports department to ***** about their child, it would be 95 percent white and 95 percent upper middle class.

 

[Simon_Cowbell]

The day after Caveman Journalist etched a story about Little Johnny's hunting exploits on the cave wall.

Thank you, TSP.

Asshole, self-promoting, my-kid's-****-don't-stink, compensating, living-vicariously-through-Junior parents have always been there, and complained.

Nowadays, though, dumb****, pandering newspapers have increasingly invited readers to give feedback.

Well, this is one misconstrued form of that.


P.S. It is pretty much the white assholes complaining where I live.

 

[User 6659]

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.

Hey, lemme tell you about the three calls I got last week from college coaches asking my advice on who they should give full rides to ...

That's good buck...we actually had a guy call us last football season. An underdog local team beat the previously undefeated local team. One of the D-backs on the winner said the all-conference QB on the losing team wasn't that good and he thought he was overrated. GREAT quote. We ran it, and QBs dad called the next day saying his kid was looking for a scholly and we could have cost him his ride with that quote...

 

[wickedwritah]

Hey, lemme tell you about the three calls I got last week from college coaches asking my advice on who they should give full rides to ...

Which is bull****. Why is a college coach relying on you for info on doling out scholarships? WTF?

 

[User 6659]

Sarcasm wicked...

 

[wickedwritah]

Hey, lemme tell you about the three calls I got last week from college coaches asking my advice on who they should give full rides to ...

Which is bull****. Why is a college coach relying on you for info on doling out scholarships? WTF?

Oh, so you're the one who falls for that line, I see. ;D

(Hint: No college coach has ever called me for that. No college coach, I hope, will ever call me for that. At least not one with any shred of self-respect. ... What I say or do will not make one iota of difference in anyone's kid getting a scholarship, period. End of story.)

Well, I have heard of coaches pulling aside reporters and talking over games with them. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the next step in this whole thing, sadly.

 

[StaggerLee]

We've had this discussion many times in my shop and I'm of the belief that this trend started when ESPN and other TV stations started broadcasting high school and little league events like they were the Super Bowl.

When ESPN started televising high school football games and basketball games, people started to develop a sense of entitlement. When I played ball back in the late 80s, it was a super-rare treat to be on the local TV station (basically public access) and it wasn't live and wasn't professionally done. Now, these high school kids get their games televised live and the announcers spend the whole three hours hyping up every kid that has a chance at the next level.

We're to the point where jamborees (glorified scrimmages) are being televised locally. But it's not just television. I think print media is to blame for some of it also. I mean, we put out a special section for the local little league team when they made it to the LLWS a couple of years back. We basically made those 12-13 kids celebrities for a month. We even covered their return to school like it was a national event. And once you do that for one team, every team expects similar coverage.

I think we, in the media, have spoiled parents/kids. It's no longer a privilege to be in the newspaper or TV, everyone feels entitled.

Someone also brought up reality TV and I agree with that. Everybody thinks they can be the next star, or the next great athlete.

 

[wickedwritah]

And cable companies, ever searching for more revenue (in addition to the annual rate increases), are throwing together cheap productions of these high school games, making a quick buck and moving onto the next town.

 

[Cadet]

I see the ink has run out on the blue font. ::)

Disclaimer: I'm going to address the issue of race/class and will make sweeping generalizations. Bear with me.

I think the reason the white/rich parents call to complain is they are the ones who have a regular habit of buying and reading the paper. Fewer complaints from poor areas where there are fewer subscribers.

Minority sports parents *****, but in different ways. I worked for a marketing company that put on free youth sports tournaments in inner cities. I will never forget one interaction with a mother. My company paid for EVERYTHING: tournament fees, officials, full team uniforms for each team, all equipment, transportation if needed, water/gatorade all day, lunch for all participants, everything.

We had donuts and coffee out for the event workers and officials one morning. A mother came up and started taking away boxes of donuts. We stopped her and she went nuts, screaming it wasn't fair because they paid all this money for their kids to play, the least we could do is give them some donuts. We reminded her that everything was FREE but she still said we owed them.

Another time we secured a donation from an off-brand sporting goods company. Free shoes and equipment. The inner-city kids refused to use any of it because it wasn't Nike or Adidas. We ended up sending it to tsunami relief, I think.