In which I become a soccer mom

Creating community in late-stage capitalism

Hi readers who work in health care: I’ll be speaking about size-inclusive medicine at the American College of Physicians’ annual meeting in New Orleans on April 4. If you’ll be there, please come say hello. I’d love to meet you.

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This past weekend, I found myself experiencing, at age 39, a wildly new emotion: Excitement about sports.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m totally, utterly disinterested in sports. Pathologically so.

Like, I can’t even muster a shred of excitement when my city’s football team wins the Super Bowl and everyone is so pumped that schools are closed and adults play hooky from work. Truly: both the medical school classes in which I teach and my son’s preschool were cancelled for the day of the Super Bowl parade last month. (OK, I did walk the ½ mile to the parade route and check it out, but I wasn’t exactly climbing any lamp posts. I promise I’m generally more fun than this makes me sound.)

But over this past weekend, I felt a strange sensation. I was watching my almost four-year-old play soccer. And I was into it. When he scored a goal, I felt thrilled.

Am I becoming a soccer mom?

Before I my son was born, I had a lot of ideas about what kind of parent I would be.

Definitely laid-back. Never helicoptering. Possibly free-range. And no matter what, never over-scheduled.

From my own youth, I remember endless lessons and classes and activities. Many of them were fun, but as I approached becoming a parent myself, my perspective shifted.

That must have been so annoying for my mom, having to ferry me around to all that stuff. I wonder how she preserved her sense of self.

And to what end did I get involved in all of those activities? To get into a good college? Yes, partly. My parents weren’t exactly Tiger Parents, but padding my nascent resume was on everyone’s mind.

Including mine, even as a child. I chugged away at piano lessons for years, miserable and not particularly talented, for reasons that are still unclear to me. I felt obligated to continue. I felt like it was wrong for me to quit.

Of course, those activities weren’t all bad. I have fond memories of soccer and softball — mostly the snacks, and talking with friends on the sidelines — and I loved musical theater and chorus. In high school, my identity was very much wrapped up in being a school newspaper kid. I spent all my weekends in a windowless computer lab, and man, I loved it.

But for every activity that stuck, that shaped who I am today, there were plenty of duds. Pottery camp. Modern dance. That circus phase.

My parents drove me all over the place, giving up their own time — and, in some ways, their identities — in the process. With my own kid, I swore to myself, things would be different.

My kid would learn to be bored — and develop resilience and creativity in the process. I had visions of my future child doing science experiments in the park while I looked effortlessly put-together, sipping a coffee and having an adult conversation. After all, kids who have time for free play turn out to be brilliant thinkers, right?

Then I spent a winter indoors with a three-year-old. There were tantrums. There was throwing. There was more screen time than pre-parenthood Mara ever thought she’d allow. There were bodily fluids. In a dramatic twist sometime in February, my darling child overturned a vase of flowers while making deliberate eye contact with me.

And then, I finally realized, it was time to sign up for some activities.

My spouse and I chose soccer as a way of dipping our toes into the world of child activities for a couple of reasons.

Despite my apathy towards sports, I guess soccer is probably my favorite, because I played it as a kid and at least understand the rules. It lets our kid run around. There’s a ubiquitous preschool soccer program all over the city, and we could get to one of the city parks where it’s held by bike. It’s relatively cheap. And perhaps most importantly, the session is only six weeks long. If we hate it, there’s an end date in sight.

I showed up to the first class with low expectations. The kids are three, after all, and there’s only so much direction-following that they can handle. The classes take place in a plaza that’s more dirt than grass.

The first day, my kid was feeling shy. But then he started getting into it. He loves to wear his soccer jersey to school and talks about his coach. “Everyone is going to win at soccer tomorrow, right?” he asks me, the night before each class.

And then, to everyone’s surprise including my own, I started getting into it.

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A few weeks before we started the classes, I was telling a friend with older kids about my ambivalence about soccer. I didn’t want to spend my weekends driving all over the state, I complained, for an activity my kid would probably quit sooner rather than later. Was is selfish that I wanted my weekends for myself, to do the things I like to do?

“No,” she said, putting her hand on my arm. “Activities are good. Trust me.”

Through their hobbies and classes, her kids tried new things and met new people, she told me, beyond the confines of their school and neighborhood. Committing to something gave structure to their weekends, demonstrated to her kids how to show up for their teams even if they didn’t always feel like it.

“It builds community,” she told me.

In our current era of political corruption and corporate degradation of everyday life, whether or not to sign up for soccer may not be the most urgent question. But still, it’s one small question that, over time, informs bigger questions.

And those bigger questions are, to me, about how to live a meaningful life, even in the face of all the existential threats in front of us. What does community look like? How do we get to know our neighbors? What do we want our experience of childhood — and parenthood — to be?

Here’s what I don’t like about soccer (and the kids-doing-activities culture vs. the kids-just-playing culture):

• You have to pay to participate

• Parents have to accompany their kids to the activities

• That means parents can’t do other things that they might like to do because they are full humans and not just child chauffeurs

• It also means that parents are implicitly involved in the activities, like the parents last weekend who actually jumped into the 3-year-old soccer scrimmage to encourage their kids to kick the ball (?)

• You have to get up early on weekends

• And the real kicker, no pun intended: I have a deep fear that all of these activities send a message that it isn’t okay to be bored. That we always have to be productive. That it isn’t okay to let our minds wander, to hang out for the sake of hanging out.

Okay, but I just told you all I actually loved watching my kid play soccer. So here’s what’s great about it:

• It sure beats watching Paw Patrol, the most mind-numbing show to ever exist

• It feels good to get outside

• My kid loves kicking soccer balls, and watching his unadulterated joy from the sidelines is life-affirming

• The other parents are really nice to talk to, and eventually it may be a good way to make more friends in the neighborhood

• As much as I love doing the things I like to do on the weekends, I also love hanging out with my kid — and this is pretty fun to do together

As we talked about all of this, my friend with older kids made the most obvious point.

Signing up for soccer, now, in 2025, does not need to be a metaphor for for the way I’m going to be a parent for the rest of my life. My approach can evolve and change over time, as my kid’s needs change, and as my needs change, too.

She put it this way: “It’s not like signing up for preschool soccer means that you also have signed up for travel soccer for the next 18 years, Mara.”

And thank God for that.

I’m curious: Parents, how do you think about how much — or how little — to schedule activities for your kids? And for adults, both with and without kids, what about your own hobbies?