Episode Transcript
[00:00:21] Welcome to 45 left to right podcast.
[00:00:25] Today is Halloween, the day that I'm recording. And I'm dressed up, as you might see if you're watching video snippets from my podcast. And I thought my costume today would be very fitting to talk about Gen X. And I'm gonna take off my headphones for a little bit of a clue as to who the heck I am.
[00:00:58] The hair. All right, going back on.
[00:01:02] All right, all right. If you're listening. Sorry, had to put my headphones back on. So we're going to talk about something that's peculiar to Gen X, especially as we are getting older.
[00:01:18] Gen X, we are the forgotten generation. The latchkey kids. We drank out of water hoses. We were kicked out of the house to play until the lights came on in the street. Our parents didn't know where we were. We were pretty much unsupervised. And there were commercials geared toward our parents that said, it's 10pm do you know where your children are?
[00:01:55] And we're stuck between the baby boomers who raised us and millennials, some of whom we raised and some of whom are close to our contemporaries because we are separated by arbitrary birth years of generations.
[00:02:16] I am considered a young Gen Xer because I was born in 1978. And I think the millennial, you know, line starts at 1982, something like that.
[00:02:31] We lived through recessions, the AIDS epidemic, the Challenger explosion, the Cold War.
[00:02:41] We are tough.
[00:02:44] We are kind of crusty.
[00:02:48] And as the boomers and millennials point fingers at each other, we can't help but think we are once again overlooked and we're bitter, especially as we get older.
[00:03:05] Some of those things are true. It was a different time. The way I am raising Devin, who is considered Gen Alpha, is very different than, well, somewhat different than how I was raised. Um, my mom always knew where I was and I only drank from a hose. On a dare from my brother, I would be fed lunch by neighbors. But again, my mom knew where I was. She fed kids sometimes. You know, we lived in a close knit neighborhood. By the way, one of my neighbors used to feed us banana and mayonnaise sandwiches. Gross. But I ate it.
[00:03:50] One of the markers of our bitterness is our insistence that we did not get participation trophies when we were kids. I am on a lot of different social media groups about Gen X, kind of as part of the podcast and researching for it. And so many Gen Xers are like, we didn't get participation trophies. Kids are weak and soft and all of that.
[00:04:23] And, you know, it's sort of a. Participation trophies is sort of a way of saying the younger generations are weak and entitled and don't know the value of hard work and all of that stuff.
[00:04:39] That is what's wrong with our society.
[00:04:43] Well, Gen X, if what we are asserting as true and that millennials received participation trophies and we didn't, who do you think was giving them these trophies?
[00:05:02] Do you think that millennials and Gen Z were presenting them to themselves when they were five?
[00:05:12] Nay.
[00:05:14] So let's start with the assertion that Gen X did not receive these participation trophies.
[00:05:23] I have two box fulls of participation trophies in my guest room upstairs. And Jeff has a whole closet full of them in his childhood better bedroom in Colorado that say otherwise.
[00:05:41] Fellow curmudgeons, look into your closets. Look in your parents closets. You have them. You have purple ribbons for participating in field days. You have certificates of completion. You have those cheap plastic trophies with the iconic man kicking a soccer ball, shooting a hoop, hitting a ball with the cheap plastic placard that says something like 1988 soccer league.
[00:06:18] If you're a woman, a girl, then you're lucky if you got these trophies with the ponytail. I even got a trophy for being born a weird, cheap plastic naked baby on a cheap marble replica square.
[00:06:39] Talk about undeserved.
[00:06:44] Listen, Gen X, I know that you think we are hardcore, and I believe we are largely, but not because we were deprived of participation trophies.
[00:07:19] Welcome back to 45 Left to Right podcast. All right, let's get into the meat of this participation trophies. We're going to start like a sixth grade informational essay, just like we all wrote at one time with the definition. All right, this is an AI summary. A participation trophy is an award given to children who participate in a recreational sport or competition, regardless of their success or performance. The purpose of participation trophies is to encourage children to enjoy the sport and continue playing and to recognize the variety of skills that children have. I'd like to add, I think it doesn't just apply to sports, but I think in our culture it is mostly done in sports.
[00:08:21] Okay, let's continue this with kind of like a seventh grade informational essay with a history of participation trophies. Ah, remember those days. Okay, so this is from Slate.com and it's called We've Been Handing out Participation Trophies for a Hundred Years, written April 10, 2019 by Steven Fatsis. All right, so I agree with this. It seems like we're always trying to point to like one or two things that say this is what's wrong with Our culture. You know, this is what's wrong with our culture. Kids are on their screens too much. This is what's wrong with our culture. People eat fat, fast food too much. This is what's wrong with our culture. Participation trophies.
[00:09:20] And it usually, you know, especially with participation trophies, it usually is to basically say that the new generation, which I think can be considered millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, the new generation is soft, lacks discipline, lacks accountability.
[00:09:42] They don't have determination and they're lazy. They're not hard workers. They are coddled and they are taught that they are special.
[00:09:52] Honestly, I can't imagine raising a child and not telling them they're special. But I, I get what they're trying to say.
[00:10:01] They, you know, never have to learn. They never learn to earn things and we're failing them by giving them these trophies. Life is going to be a rude awakening for them.
[00:10:18] And here's what's interesting. I think we think that this is a new thing, participation trophies. But in fact, we, being baby boomers and Gen X parents, are not the first to hand out participation trophies. In fact, they were first handed out after World War I.
[00:10:41] And around the same time kind of as part of it, universities awarded actual participation trophies to fraternities and other campus groups who had the most people participate in intramural sports. In 1924, the University of Minnesota handed out a 30 inch sterling participation trophy which was very nice and big and it was to encourage students to do sports.
[00:11:17] I swear, Luna, every time I start recording, hold up.
[00:11:23] The participation trophy was to encourage exercise and participation and to reward, you know, competition and trying hard, no matter, well, what the outcome is. Now, I want to say I, I am not against competition and winning and losing. I am really competitive, but especially when it comes to children.
[00:11:51] It's, you know, like we have Devin do sports not for the winning and the losing and the championships or any of that. It's because it's an easy way to teach your children lessons and, you know, value of hard work and setting goals and being a good teammate, I mean, it's invaluable. Okay, so.
[00:12:15] So this is me talking, not the article talking. Just as an aside, I think the assertion that it's only worth doing if you win seems very contradictory.
[00:12:31] I mean, why would anyone want to try if their efforts would be dashed if they weren't the absolute best? Because statistically you're probably not going to be the best. Or if you are the best, you're not going to be the best all the time.
[00:12:49] What about just Enjoying the experience.
[00:12:55] And this isn't soft.
[00:12:58] This is about learning how to live a full life.
[00:13:04] And I think that's the bigger, the bigger lesson, you know, for your kids.
[00:13:11] All right, again, this is me. This is what I love about sports.
[00:13:18] I love to compete. I love to watch others compete and put in the effort to compete.
[00:13:25] Last night the Dodgers won the World Series. Woohoo. And when I watch sports at that level, besides just thinking about the amazing skill these players have, I think about all the work and effort that they have put in to become that good. And not only that, for the team, to put this, I mean, baseball is a long season. And put this, you know, amazing season together. I think about, like Freddie Freeman won the mvp. And I think about how when he was playing Little League, you know, maybe he had a dream of going to the World Series, and now he is the most valuable player of the World Series. I mean, I just, I mean, obviously they made it, but all the lessons that you need to learn in the ups and downs and the just the losing and the winning are incredible. I mean, I get teary because I think about what these players have done and gone through to reach their goals. Okay, so like I said, I, I love winning and I don't like losing, but there's a greater lesson in playing sports or competing and that is kind of just enjoying the experience.
[00:14:59] Now in the 1990s is going back to the article that is when handing out participation trophies was at its height.
[00:15:09] At that time, structured youth organizations started to grow. Little League grew, all these, I don't know if you remember, remember the whole soccer mom, you know, term that happened in the 1990s, actually, about when Bill Clinton was running. That was a demographic that they were targeting. But soccer was becoming really popular.
[00:15:35] I never understood it, but that's me.
[00:15:40] So there, you know, because these were more recreational youth organizations, there was less emphasis on winning.
[00:15:52] Now in 1993, a very well known sports journalist named John Powers, who works for the Boston Globe, and he's very well known for his Olympic coverage, he wrote we have become a nation of winners. Our shelves lined with consolation trophies and certificates of participation.
[00:16:18] Obviously his snarkiness there is that, you know, the whole idea that everyone's a winner and everyone wins, you know, that sort of attitude.
[00:16:30] But you know, that's kind of when that got started. The, you know, anti participation trophy movement got started. In 1998, a dad columnist, I'm not sure what that is in El Paso complained that participation trophies were responsible for giving our children a False sense of accomplishment.
[00:16:59] All right, me again.
[00:17:01] Not the article.
[00:17:03] Here's the thing. We might think when we're handing out participation trophies to everyone that the children think, oh, I've won.
[00:17:17] Children know the difference between a participation trophy and winning. Like the winners, they know who the champions were. They know. Devin is one of the most competitive kids I know. And he has been on losing teams and he has been on winning teams for baseball, he's been on two championship teams, and he has been on a soccer team that scored more goals for the other team than for themselves.
[00:17:52] Devin knows the difference between winning and losing.
[00:17:59] And this is nationwide. But I found an article about North Carolina a while back. I think early 2000s, they have proposed bills eliminating participation trophies for rec sports that are run by local governments.
[00:18:21] There was a YouTube video, and this is actually in Charlotte, North Carolina, where we lived for six years.
[00:18:29] And you know, they interviewed parents about kind of the same things we've talked about already. You know, kids have a sense of entitlement and they don't know how to work hard and all of that. Well, looking down at the YouTube video in the comments, people commented a lot. What a waste of time. Doesn't our state legislature have better things to do?
[00:18:55] I just thought that was funny.
[00:18:57] All right, so I have a second article also from Slate, written at a different time, and it's called the Exquisite Shame of Participation Trophy. This is By Tori Bosch, May 23, 2018.
[00:19:13] This is just a quick little thing that says, oh, I thought this was funny. Kids aren't idiots. No one thinks that they're a great athlete or 20 years later that they deserve a promotion because they got a 4 inch tall plastic cup for playing soccer in kindergarten.
[00:19:35] Well said. I agree.
[00:19:39] Okay, well, I kind of. I don't normally like to reference Wikipedia, but there's some good information here. So this is, this is basically some arguments against and arguments for participation trophies. All right. Arguments against participation trophies can foster a sense of entitlement.
[00:20:03] They diminish the value of hard earned victories.
[00:20:08] They reward people for showing up.
[00:20:12] Yes, they do. That's kind of the whole point.
[00:20:17] To encourage participation, to encourage kids to try new things. That sort of thing.
[00:20:24] Kids should learn. This one really gets me. Kids should learn when they aren't good at something.
[00:20:33] Okay, why do you want to crush them from even trying?
[00:20:41] And do you have to be good at something just to do it? I mean, honestly, I am not great at Jiu Jitsu. I am a 46 year old overweight woman with limited agility.
[00:21:01] I regularly get My butt whooped. But I love it. And I, you know, if I was just quit, oh, I'm not good at it. I'm not going to do it, man. I would really rob myself of great experience.
[00:21:17] And plus don't like kids, especially when they're first starting something, they're not going to be good. There might be natural athletes, but you, you know, kids develop at different rates. They might not start off great and then they become better because they put in the work. So if you can encourage them a little bit for that, I think you should do it. So let's talk about my own child.
[00:21:46] Devin has quite the inflated sense of self.
[00:21:53] He does think that he's really good at things that maybe he isn't, but he has worked hard to improve in those things.
[00:22:06] In baseball, he thinks, I think he thinks he's better than he is. He's average, very average, but he loves it. And he's also in baseball, he has set himself goals and had to work his butt off to achieve them. And he hasn't always achieved them, but he is enjoying it and he's getting better and he's developing a skill.
[00:22:36] He has met friends through that. I have met friends through that. I mean, there's so much value in it. And this is a gender generality, but I think that men and boys relate to each other a lot through like sports and skills in sports. And Devin can catch, he can throw and he can hit a baseball, which means he can throw a football and he has good hand eye coordination. And that's just, you know, it's one of those things that I think men do to relate to each other. So that's valuable.
[00:23:18] Okay, so here are some arguments for participation trophies. And I'm going to admit these are a little foofy. Okay. Doesn't mean they're not valuable, but it's going to come across as a little, you know, foofy. All right. Receiving a participation trophy can help children develop a strong sense of self esteem and self worth. Um, I'd like to preface this by saying I think that participation trophies are most valuable from age 3 to 4 up until maybe 8 or 9. After that, if you give a 10 year old an 11 year old and up a participation trophy, it just, it doesn't have value to them. They are just, you know, it doesn't mean anything to them. So I think in the early years of their development, that is where they are most valued. Okay.
[00:24:22] Participation trophies, they create a positive learning environment.
[00:24:28] They create an inclusive learning environment. It's sort of emphasizes teamwork and learning and team building and personal growth over winning. Now I think you can have participation trophies and have a winner, have a, have a champion as well. I think that's the best of all the worlds.
[00:24:55] You know, this is, this one's really important. Participation trophies can protect children's mental health by giving them a soft place to land in their childhood.
[00:25:08] You know, it's, it's giving them a little cushion. Like, Devin has a lot of confidence, which I love, and I'm not bursting the bubble because life is going to burst the bubble, but because we've always encouraged him and, you know, encouraged him to try new things. And we praise the work and the effort and those intangibles.
[00:25:33] So hopefully one day when his little bubble is burst, he can come to us or he sees us as a safe place. And if your parents aren't your safe place, that is really tough. Right, okay.
[00:25:53] And, you know, basically participation trophies recognize the contribut contributions of each team member and that can encourage young, young athletes to have a positive attitude and give their best effort.
[00:26:11] One of Devin's coaches, baseball coaches, Chris Urias, I'm going to give him a little shout out. He did a really cool thing for the players throughout the season. That I think would be a good alternative to participation trophies.
[00:26:29] The years that he played for Chris, Chris bought each player really nice hats. Like those, you know, those that are really popular now with boys with like the wide, flat brim. They look really nice and they're much better than what the league puts out.
[00:26:50] And I keep up with a lot of those boys and they still wear those hats. These are hats from three years ago. They have a lot of sentimental value for them. And also they're useful and it's team building because they were on the field and they're like, look, you know, look at our special hats. And now they see each other out and about in our small town. And it. I thought that was a really great idea. And he paid for that out of his own pocket. So.
[00:27:21] Good job, Chris.
[00:27:25] All right, so at the young ages, it does kind of basic things, encourages participation. It gets kids, you know, off their screens and inside the house, from inside the house and outdoors and playing and moving and sweating and interacting with other kids. That is a really good thing.
[00:27:53] And like I said before, Devin. Devin's played sports since he was probably 4 or 5 years old. And even at the little, little ages, he learned, you know, how to work hard and give his best effort all the time.
[00:28:14] And I think that he has learned those things More in sports than in school, but it translates into school. He's a good, diligent student and works really hard. He knows how to set goals for himself. And, you know, when you're three or four, five years old and you first start playing soccer or baseball, and at the end of the season, they give you a cool little trophy. It means a lot and it keeps them interested.
[00:28:50] And I just think we're way too ultra competitive these days. Uh, there's definitely a rise in travel sports, which I do not have a problem with. Um, especially if you have a kid who's talented in, in a sport and is really interested and loves that sport. I am all about that, but at the rec leagues, we're just way too competitive. Um, I'm not against competition, but, you know, it is supposed to be fun. It is only sports. We're not curing cancer, we're playing sports. And I think a lot of parents, you know, value the winning so much in their justification is, well, the world is a competitive place, and I want to prepare my child for that, and I think that's good. But we're also acting like all of our kids are going to be in these ultra competitive fields. They're going to be stock brokers and high pressure sales. And not every industry is so cutthroat.
[00:30:09] Actually, I think most industries aren't that cutthroat. So let's style it back a little and let them be kids.
[00:30:19] So a lot of this logic with the competition and, you know, kids should know that they're not good at things and that sort of thing. Well, let's apply this logic to academics.
[00:30:34] Should we discourage our kids from going to school because they aren't the best, or they aren't good at it, or it's not natural to them? Should we hold them back from going to the next grade because they aren't the number one student?
[00:30:51] That doesn't make any sense. Logically, it doesn't make any sense.
[00:30:58] All right, next article. I swear I'm getting to the end.
[00:31:05] All right, this is from the Atlantic, and it is about how millennials are actually not entitled, but in fact are workaholics.
[00:31:24] All right, let's talk about millennials who are much maligned by older generations for some reason.
[00:31:35] Gen X boomers, we love to mock and denigrate millennials and Gen Z. And I used to be one of those people. I used to buy into all of that. And then I went to school with young men and women who were born right on the edge between millennials and Gen Z.
[00:31:59] And let me tell you, they were not entitled or soft or weak. They were focused, very hardworking, thoughtful, disciplined.
[00:32:14] I was. I had to take German while I was at UC Irvine. And we did a lot of group projects, which usually make me groan. But every, you know, anytime I was in a group project with these young people, they all did their parts. They all worked really hard. They were always prepared.
[00:32:37] Just incredible. I even went to school with a young woman who was homeless and living in her car because her scholarship did not cover housing. But she woke up out of her car every day to go to school and she graduated.
[00:32:59] So I will always defend these generations.
[00:33:05] All right, well, consider this.
[00:33:07] Millennials actually started working in an economic downturn. So they had a lot of fear that they were going to lose their jobs right when they started working.
[00:33:19] So they actually have felt more pressure throughout their adult working life. They take less vacations, four days less per year. That is a vacation to Hawaii right there. They take less vacations than Gen X and boomers.
[00:33:40] And I don't know if you remember, like the beginning of the tech boom, a lot of these tech companies in particular would offer ping pong tables and free gym and free food and all of those things. And I remember, you know, people being really critical, like, oh, geez, aren't they there to work? You know, all of these benefits, do you know what that means for them? It means you're going to live at work. They're going to provide the gym and the food and all of that because you are going to be working the longest hours.
[00:34:19] Think about that. You're not going to have a life outside of work.
[00:34:24] So millennials work hard out of fear. And they actually have more fear than boomers in particular ever had about their jobs.
[00:34:42] All right, thought there was one more. There is.
[00:34:48] All right, so this is just from Psychology Today, the Power of Participation Trophies by Candida Fink. And it was published February 27, 2023.
[00:35:04] Okay, um, so there's the argument that every kid will think they're a winner. So they will always feel entitled, entitled to win, even if they don't deserve to win again. Children know that they didn't win. They know they were not the champions. They know that they were last place. They know that they scored more goals for the other team than themselves. They know kids keep score even when adults aren't keeping score. I remember when Devin was really little, they play on these really small fields and they have just the little pop up goals.
[00:35:53] And it's cute soccer because they all just huddle around the ball and follow the ball around.
[00:36:04] And they didn't have goalies. You know, I mean, goals were scored, but it was. It was nuts.
[00:36:11] Well, after the game, all the kids would say, who won?
[00:36:16] And I wouldn't know. I wasn't keeping track. We didn't keep track because at that age, it doesn't matter. And honestly, they don't have the skill for it to matter.
[00:36:26] But they had fun, so that was good.
[00:36:30] Honestly, some kids just played for the snack bag. That's what they wanted, that snack bag, because it usually had candy in it.
[00:36:40] A participation trophy is just telling a young kid, oh, it was really awesome that you were there and that you had fun. It's not saying everyone wins first place. It's not what it's saying. It's just saying, wow, Even from the beginning, In World War I, after World War I, it was, hey, wow, good job, Way to get out there. Way to give it your effort, all of that. So even though the idea that participation trophies are keeping kids from trying hard things, it does the opposite. It gets them to try hard things. There's value in trying something new in particular that you might not be good at.
[00:37:32] And then the whole idea of, you know, kids need to learn about winning or losing, that they need to be prepared for the real world.
[00:37:44] Do they?
[00:37:46] The real world is going to hit them in the face whether we like it or not. Do we really need to hit them in the face with the real world when they're 10 years old? We can prepare them in other ways by being, you know, supportive parents and encouraging parents by exposing them to new things, all of those things. We don't need to recreate the real world when they're seven years old. They're gonna find out soon enough, especially when they hit middle school and high school. When kids are very aware of their peers and comparing themselves to their peers, that's kind of when that real world starts coming through. So give them a stupid plastic trophy when they're seven years old.
[00:38:57] Welcome back to 45 Left to Right podcast. I really appreciate you listening to my passionate support of participation trophies. And I fear that Gen X has embraced our school of hard knocks Persona and just taken it way too far.
[00:39:24] We grew up differently than other generations, no doubt. And I am happy that I grew up during the 80s and 90s. You know, I kind of liked being unsupervised and doing dumb things.
[00:39:42] I do get mad and bitter when the boomers and millennials spar like we're not even there. That drives me crazy.
[00:39:53] But our we had it harder philosophy just isn't really true. And the idea especially that we didn't receive participation trophies is evidence of this. We got them. We have them deep in the recesses of our closets and our brains.
[00:40:15] Our parents fed us, and I think most of us. Our parents loved us.
[00:40:22] Now, we did not live with the same safety standards, and those of us still around survived, but not everyone survived, and that is why we have safety standards now.
[00:40:37] If anything, let's not use participation trophies as a means to our rallying cry that we had it so much harder and that if you get one as a kid, you're soft.
[00:40:55] Remember that our memories are also fading, so we might be misremembering things right now. Let kids be kids and let them learn the brutality of the real world. In due time. It's coming.
[00:41:17] And if we don't present ourselves as a soft landing zone, then we are not setting our kids up for success or our kids won't think that we are a safe place to land thank you so much for listening to 45 left or right podcast.
[00:41:44] I will be back to my ADHD series in two weeks with an interview with just a remarkable, dynamic woman, Dr. Kathleen Nadeau, who is a leading expert in ADHD in women and girls. She's awesome, so definitely tune in for that.
[00:42:11] And if you could go to my Facebook page 4:45 left or right podcast and leave a comment, I am actually going to be, if I can figure it out, posting some little reels and stories from this episode with me in costume. So if you could comment and see if you know or can guess who I am, I would love that. And that'll spark a debate, I'm sure, but that'll help me out because I'm trying to boost my traffic.
[00:42:46] Okay, don't be so bitter and bye for now.
