Why we need sports

The last fifteen years have marked a radical shift in human consciousness, and a slow decline in activity. Alvin Toffler, noted author of global trend-spotting books like "Future Shock" and "Third Wave" predicted the movement in his last book, "Powershift."

In it, he says that the Information Revolution gives people the power to decide things for themselves, and not just take the word of any authority figure, like a doctor or lawyer. In a sense, one thing the Worldwide Web has also done, alongside the explosion in media, is take more people off their feet and onto their behinds.

Statistically speaking, there are more and more threats to the emotional stability of people in general, as you will see in several statistical trends in the United States. Since more and more information and opportunities are available, more and more people are going out to do things for themselves. Specifically, in the US, more and more women are working and leaving their children alone at home more. And these children cannot decide what to do with their time. As they say, an idle mind is the devil’s playground.

In the mid-1990s, the US Census Bureau estimates that about twenty percent of American children between five and fourteen years of age were being left to care for themselves after school. This is a total of about 4.5 million children.

Sociologist Andrew Hacker says that seventy percent of married women with preschool children under the age of six are employed. Many of them don’t have to work, but instead opt to leave their children with strangers in day-care centers. This is both the result of economic concerns and their growing desire for a career along with a family life.

Between 1979 and 1988 the suicide rate for girls aged ten to fourteen rose 27 percent. For boys, it increased 71 percent. These children, left to their own devices at home, have not been pointed in the direction of a proper outlet for all their energy and need for guidance.

In April of 2001, Rich Lowry, writing in the National Review from research done by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, declared that toddlers who are put in day care for long periods tend to be more aggressive and defiant, regardless of the quality of day care. Seventeen percent of children left in day-care for more than 30 hours a week get into lots of fights, show explosive behavior and act cruelly.

There’s another frightening statistic. Mary Eberstadt wrote an essay called "Home-Alone America" in Policy Review, which says that, between 1980 and 1997, sexual abuse in the United States rose by 350 percent.

"Here, too, a connection to home-alone America seems undeniable," she writes. "For while children do risk abuse at the hands of biological parents, they are much more likely to be abused by a cohabiting male who is not biologically related…(and) that in order for predatory males (and they are almost always males) to abuse, they must first have access; and that the increasing absence from home of biological mothers…effectively increases the access of would-be predators."

Sociologist Arlie Russell Rothschild learned that "a study of nearly five thousand eighth-graders and their parents found that children who were home alone for eleven or more hours a week were three times more likely than other children to abuse alcohol, tobacco or marijuana."

There’s more.

National Center for Health Statistics stated that, in 1970, fewer than five percent of American girls under fifteen years of age were having sex. Today, about one out of every three girls that age is having sex. Coincidentally, three million teenagers are afflicted with a sexually transmitted disease every year.

This is not to blame working mothers or their husbands. But perhaps there should be a discussion on what children can do in the time between their dismissal from school and when their parents come home from work. If more and more children were enrolled in sports programs (not just during the summer) the emotional and psychological void in their lives would be filled with their learning about their capabilities, accomplishing something productive, and being guided by an adult on a regular basis.

A child left at home does not feel safe. On the contrary, if he or she receives no guidance, there is tremendous stress in just being able to manage even simple chores at home. Besides, children are meant to be active, so being cooped up in the house waiting for Mom and Dad is not the ideal scenario for a child. They need physical activity to bring out a sense of well-being, disperse their energy, and give them something fun to do.

Even here in the Philippines, more and more mothers are working, largely out of necessity. This means that there is a chance we will see the disturbing numbers written here about the US paralleled in the Philippines.

That’s why we need sports, so our children don’t end up as mere statistics. And we might be the last to know.

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Don’t miss this week’s episode of The Basketball Show, tomorrow at 2 p.m. over RPN 9. The program is sponsored by Columbia International, Red Horse Extra Strong Beer, Greenwich Pizza and Pearl of the Pacific Boracay. Win prizes from Accel sports gear in the Hoops Trivia contest.