Jackson Leach
In the classic nature versus nurture debate that has circulated the academic world for centuries, the question is always asked: do our personalities arise from what is inside of us, or what is around us? It seems that the debate will never be settled, but as with any dispute that carries on this long, a compromise of sorts has been reached. Most people, at least people that are somewhat undecided or uneducated on the matter, will argue that a combination of our genetics and our upbringing shapes our personality and our future, and while I have to agree that genetics plays a role in your mental capability and physical stature, I must disagree with both the compromise and the view of nature proponents. Our upbringing is everything. Our environment is a mold that is used form us into the person we are as an adult, just as a mold for a sword is used for the shape of the sword. Everything we see around us, even from an age as young as a year old, imprints on us; our brain soaking up everything around us as quickly as it can. That is why I feel it is my responsibility to expose one of the quietest yet most dangerous plagues of our American society: the abuse done by overbearing parents. This is not to say that a firm hand from parents is not appropriate for discipline or to keep their child’s grades in check, but specifically I would like to point out the great harm some parents cause by requiring above and beyond what their child can produce in an athletic sense. Competitive sports are if anything healthy for a growing person, and are other examples of environmental factors shaping a person’s character, but parents that don’t stop to respect the fact that high school sports must be a mix of fun and work for a student are doomed to crush their child. Dangers caused by this phenomenon include: a tendency for children in these scenarios to end up just like their parents and continue the cycle, children under this pressure missing out on important growth due to parents, and physical and mental harm done to a growing mind because of the crushing expectations and training requirements given by parents. Analyzing these keypoints effectively exposes the true horror that lies within the families of our society today, and show the long term effects that it causes.
Going back to the nature versus nurture discussion I mentioned earlier, it is my belief that you are what your parent makes you, whether they do it deliberately or on accident. It is no surprise then that personality traits are passed down for generations through families, but not because of genetic causes. This is easily applied to the crisis of overbearing parents in sports. In a book written by Karyl Mcbride called Will I ever be Good Enough, Mcbride discusses the major problems of the effects created by parents expecting too much from their children. “This kind of emotional environment and dishonesty can be crazy-making.” This quote from the book shows how Mcbride thinks that the stress put on these children makes them “crazy” and only continues this cycle of mental abuse for generations. It’s all about knowing how to moderate your guidance and support, and all it takes is one parent to be taught that lesson and generations can be spared the extremities of parental overcoaching. As well, this is a time when a parent is the ultimate authority figure, so high schoolers are powerless to resist the demands of their parents. Putting growing people through these kinds of tests also is dangerous because many kids don’t know how to express the emotions they feel, and bottling up these emotions can lead to life threatening results. Anxiety is a real issue in our society, and often the high expectations of parents can heavily contribute to these symptoms of anxiety. It is often said that the best steel is made under pressure, and while this phrase makes sense I’d like to point out that too much pressure will just cause the steel to break before it’s finished.
The physical expectations for many high school athletes already can be hard enough just from what a coach requires of you, but kids who have their parents strictly dominate a physical regimen only end up being damaged by it. In the documentary Trophy Kids by Chris Bell, a crew of cameramen follow around different families undergoing these situations to get real live footage of this events in play. In one case, a son being bred to play college football for Washington University is put through a daily schedule by his father to make sure he is able to compete to play on a college level. Included in this schedule is a high amount of protein drinks, combined with daily intense exercises and weightlifting workouts. It is evident after watching a few minutes of this situation that the required schedule is far too much for the boy to handle. Our bodies have well defined limits that we must all obey for fear of breaking our bodies, and over exercising and taking in too much protein powder is a way to do that. Too much of anything is bad for you after all. During the documentary the boy begins to break down physically after a few days, and often skips his required protein because it makes him sick, without his father knowing of course. This may seem like a rare case, but it happens all of the time particularly with fathers who want their sons to be as masculine and athletically equipped as possible. This line of thought can lead to a dark place however. A common phrase to refute this is “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” While overusing protein powder and over exercising may not kill you, it will make you weaker as your body cannot keep up with the excessive habits. Again, at this point children have no power to say no to these methods as their parents are the ultimate authority figure. These schedules also can drastically take away from other activities that are necessary for a child’s growth.
One great cost of this style of overbearing parenting is time. This time expenditure takes away from other important things that a growing child needs. The chiefest of these is a social experience which a child may miss out on, not only for just having to spend more time on the required training, but also for parents not wanting their child to be distracted by friends . Psychologists prove time and time again how important it is for growing people to interact with people their age and be socially involved, and this authoritarian parenting style only detracts from that. An article by Ben Nadeau discusses the damage put on developmental characteristics. “Parents can often live vicariously through the success of their children and can seriously damage their child’s love for the game and other important developmental characteristics like self-assuredness.” This quote points out how distracting children’s parents can be from their important psychological developments, even though they are trying to keep their children from being distracted in the first place. It also destroys a child's sense of self value in some cases. An Image made by Gary Meader illustrates this, with a parent and a coach both having their heads blown up in the image, while the kid is very small and insignificant in contrast. This shows how crushing an overbearing parent can be to the independence and self value a child should have.
The discussed components of this mental abuse all contribute to a society where living up to your parents expectations is everything, even when you know that their expectations are wrong or impossible. Every athlete about to play in a sports game is nervous of failure or embarrassment, but do players have more fear of failing in front of their friends or in front of their parents? Rarely do performing athletes not have even a small fear of what their parents would think for their performance. This problem has a solution that can easily be achieved, and that is by having these overbearing parents by corrected. The first way to get out of a hole is to stop digging. In the same way, the generation after generation that could be affected by this crisis could be saved by the simple step of someone explaining to these parents that what they are doing is wrong. A parent shouldn’t be entirely a friend to their child, but in the same way they shouldn’t be entirely a coach either. The key to solving this is by explaining moderation to these extreme parents, which will fix decades of psychological problems to occur.
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