The Nation's Pulse: Soccer Dads & Single Moms
Tucker, William
by William Tucker Soccer Dads & Single Moms sa t fall I looked at the roster of my L soccer team and couldn't believe it. Every kid had two parents! "That's not all," my wife noted. "Some of them...
...Societies that discourage divorce and disapprove of single motherhood do well for themselves...
...What's new and interesting is that they are not always doing it for their sons...
...No matter where he was on the field, no matter how far away the ball, she would always be screaming for him to do something...
...The kid became one of the biggest prima donnas in the league—a talented athlete who ultimately became a huge liability to every team he played on because he would not pass the ball...
...When parents tried to encourage him, she'd reprimand them for "putting too much pressure on him...
...She's now raising two of them...
...In another context, some might even be criticized for putting too much emphasis on sports, but for now nobody's complaining...
...That is the single mother...
...There is another species of mom who is unfortunately conspicuous at our soccer games...
...They require everything be done twice—double mailings, double phone calls, duplicate team pictures...
...Coaching sports teams is a window into cultural trends — a one-way mirror that sometimes makes you ashamed of what you're seeing...
...There are a few women coaches, to be sure, but they're generally not moms...
...I met my first when my oldest son began playing soccer at age six...
...47...
...Some of them actually have the same last name...
...Soccer is one sport where boys and girls can WILLIAM TUCKER is The American Spectator's New York correspondent...
...They tend to be older women who played soccer themselves and do it for love of the game...
...In Brooklyn, people don't have cars...
...Every five minutes he would be crying over some slight...
...What all this has made clear to me is that divorce and illegitimacy create enormous social costs that everybody else has to bear...
...This year, without any divorced parents making everybody uncomfortable or solipsistic single mothers ruining their sons, we tore up the league...
...on Saturday mornings to set up the goals and line the fields—these are invariably devoted dads...
...I love them all...
...Yet the people who organize these leagues, who put in endless hours negotiating with the parks department for fields, mail out applications, arrive at 7 a.m...
...Then there was another single mother whose eight-year-old son was an emotional wreck...
...The American Spectator • March 1997 play on a par until about age n. Many of these anonymous toilers (and I'm not one of them) are doing it so their girls will play...
...I've been coaching soccer for six years, and I am still waiting to meet a soccer mom...
...It was a full-time job just to get him on the field...
...They bring folding chairs, ask about the next practice, root for the team, sometimes even volunteer to organize refreshments for the next game...
...For four years my middle son's coach has been a personable woman in her 4os whose sister has an illegitimate child every two years and dumps it onto a relative...
...Most games I had to hold down the score...
...Last year I had a lesbian divorce...
...Often they are doing it for their daughters...
...At the first practice, she confided that her son was actually eight but she was sneaking him into a younger division "to build his confidence...
...More often than not, they are not married...
...I'd call it the power of happy families...
...Another single mother on my team used to come and shriek her son's name from the sidelines for the entire game...
...Someone who drives her kids to the game...
...They're cordial and enthusiastic, never complaining that their kid doesn't play enough (which fathers often do...
...There are lots of moms who go to the games...
...I pleaded with her to learn the other kids' names and root for them as well, but to no avail...
...Yet nobody I know is talking about "soccer dads...
...The worst problems, though, are the divorced parents...
...Maybe that's why I've missed the trend...
...I suppose that might make her a "soccer mom," but it's not what the pundits have in mind...
...She drove everyone crazy...
...Yet she blamed me and everyone else as well...
...Not to mention soccer teams...
...The "partners" were so bitter that neither would allow the other to attend the games on the weekends she had custody...
...What is a soccer mom...
...Take soccer moms...
Vol. 30 • March 1997 • No. 3
