“Basically, the whole travel sports industry has obliterated rec sports. If your kid's 12 and likes playing baseball, there's not really the active town rec sports where they play on Friday nights anymore. You got to sign up for one of these travel leagues and then travel all over. And it's very expensive and it's very time consuming.”
Freakonomics Radio · Ideas & Essays · November 2026
Context
Dubner asked Kearney for examples of intensive parenting that might be counterproductive. She picks travel sports as the clearest case of how the daily cost of raising kids has gone up for people deciding whether to have them.
Transcript
…structures in the workplace where people can more readily combine parenting and their kids' schedules will be super helpful. Then, on the other side, of course, is how do we ratchet down the intensity of parenting? I think most people would agree that a lot of it is very counterproductive. Give
me some examples of what you think people might argue is counterproductive.
An obvious example is travel sports. Basically, the whole travel sports industry has obliterated rec sports. If your kid's 12 and likes playing baseball, there's not really the active town rec sports where they play on Friday nights anymore. You got to sign up for one of these travel leagues and then, you know, travel all over. And it's very expensive and it's very time consuming. And so then, when you're choosing that against the other things you might do with your time that really weren't available or socially accessible to previous cohorts, it's not hard to see that people are making different decisions. A friend of mine who doesn't have kids, and she'll be like, Melissa, why would I want to have kids? You spend all your weekends at like soccer or hockey tournaments, and I'm like going out for brunch and going to Pilates, right?
And what do you say to her?
Nothing. I grant that she looks better and she's less tired.
I think this is the blueberry problem.
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