The Latest Mother/Daughter Thing
August 16, 2009
by Hughes
|What’s the latest mother/daughter activity? Cooking? No.Shopping? No. It’s sports!
The New York Times is reporting that:
As the popularity of youth tournaments has intensified over the past decade, a peculiar trend has emerged: girls’ sporting events tend to attract more relatives and generate more revenue for tourism than similar events for boys. And that is drawing increased attention from economic development officials.
“There are far more people who will travel with 12-year-old girls than even 12-year-old boys,” said Don Schumacher, executive director of the National Association of Sports Commissions, a trade group that advises communities on attracting sporting events. He and others mentioned several possible reasons, including a tendency among parents to be more protective of daughters; a heightened interest in girls’ sports; and the increased attendance of mothers at games.
The dynamics of parents wanting to travel with (and be more protective of) girls lends itself to all kinds of analysis that’s beyond my expertise. I’m just delighted to hear that families, including moms, are increasingly supportive of their daughters’ sports activities, and that such support is building economic clout, which will in turn lead to more investment in girls’ sports!
Brava!
Gretchen Carlson
Claudia Poccia
Jacki Zehner
I have both a son and a daughter who had sports tournaments. The daughter is pleasant to be around, focused on the event, and probably 3 years more mature relative to her age than my son was. So traveling with her is a pleasure. My son and his team mates were rowdy, unfocused, loud, constantly needing food and prone to doing dumb things causing emergency room visits. Also as my husband pointed out to me early on “no one would be dumb enough to kidnap him”, the same could not be said about my daughter. But a study as to all the reasons girl sports generate more money would be interesting.
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