Parents Can Better Protect Girls' Mental Health in Sports — Here's How
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The 2024 Summer Olympics are almost upon us and it’s touted as the first Games to ever achieve full gender parity among athletes. In Paris, as many women will compete as men, which is something to celebrate and a reflection of the increased opportunities girls have today to get involved in sports. But we can also acknowledge how much more work we must do to make the athletic experience — at every level, on all fields of play — truly equal for everyone.
The positive effects of playing sports are well known: increased self-esteem, social development, physical fitness, and honing transferable skills like teamwork and discipline. Research by the Women’s Sports Foundation has also shown that mental health disorders are up to 2.5 times lower for girls who play sports versus those who never have. The 2023 Project Play study by the Aspen Institute showed that the participation rate among girls is the highest it’s been since 2013, due in no small part to the rise in popularity of professional women’s sports, which have received far more attention and media exposure than ever before. With more chances to watch and emulate superstars like Simone Biles, Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark, Coco Gauff, Sophia Smith, and many more (just wait until the Games kick off on July 26), girls are more likely to see themselves participating.
Where we still fall short, however, is creating team cultures and environments that take the unique needs of girls into account. Sports remain a masculine place, historically created for and by men, still widely led by men—and today we still play by the same rules, under the same philosophies. But what if we didn’t? What if we reimagined how we approach the way female athletes are coached, how they train, and how they compete, based on how their bodies and minds differ? How many more of them would stay active longer if they felt like they belonged in the first place?
These are some of the questions we ask and try to answer in our new book, The Price She Pays: Confronting the Hidden Mental Health Crisis in Women’s Sports—From the Schoolyard to the Stadium, written with Katie Steele, a former NCAA Division 1 athlete and licensed marriage and family therapist, and Tiffany Brown, Ph.D., LMFT, and faculty member at the University of Oregon. Through first-hand accounts, research, and reporting, the book delves into the issues that girls and women commonly experience throughout their athletic careers, from mistreatment and abuse, to body image and eating disorders, and conditions like anxiety and depression.
Here are three ways to help guide parents and coaches toward more joyful and successful athletic experiences for girls of all ages.
Talk about puberty with your athlete
Although they’re giving it a go in increasing numbers, as it currently stands, girls are two times more likely than boys to drop out of sports by age 14, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. It’s around the time of puberty that they begin to feel uncomfortable and self-conscious moving their growing, rapidly changing bodies. Many girls become inactive when they get their periods, because of the way they feel or even because they fear leaking through a uniform. The challenges that girls face as budding athletes are also so often treated like taboo topics, exacerbated by the lack of diversity among youth coaches, 75 percent of whom are men, according to Project Play research.
The physical and hormonal shifts come at a time that their brains are also changing. Girls may feel a lack of control over their bodies, as well as over other aspects of their lives. They’re temporarily more susceptible to injuries as their centers of gravity alter, as well as performance plateaus or declines as they adapt to their evolving body composition. Life generally can feel more stressful, and as a result, these young athletes can experience symptoms of anxiety and depression, or other mental health conditions.
It’s no surprise that the girls who have open access to lines of communication and education with trusted adults, like their parents and coaches, weather this turbulent time better than those who have less information about puberty and how it might influence their sport experiences. Normalizing these conversations on teams and through conversations at home can go a long way toward keeping girls active and healthy. Parents should remember to emphasize that periods are a sign of good health and growth leads to increased strength. Framing this phase of life in terms of how it leads to positive long-term outcomes can help girls navigate through the hard days.
Identify healthy coach-athlete relationships
Establishing what coach-athlete relationships should look like early on in a girl’s sports career is important. Should she decide to continue competing as she grows up, her coaches will become some of the influential people in her life. Making sure that those bonds are built on mutual respect, strong ethics, and shared goals is critical.
The 2022 investigation into allegations of abuse and sexual misconduct in women’s professional soccer, conducted by former US Attorney General Sally Yates, underscored the reasons why all girls should learn early what a healthy environment looks and feels like: “The ubiquity of certain kinds of sexist or demeaning remarks as ‘tough coaching’ normalized verbal and emotional abuse. Overwhelming numbers of players, coaches, and [United States Soccer Federation] staff observed that women players are conditioned to accept and respond to abusive coaching behaviors as youth players. By the time they reach the professional level, many do not recognize the conduct as abusive.”
At the youth level, coaches should observe their players’ strengths and weaknesses and integrate new drills and games during practice that address the areas where skills might need work, instead of shaming their teams for getting it wrong in competition. Coaches who treat every game and practice as a growth opportunity are more likely to inspire belief and confidence. And the most important aspect of participation for kids should be having fun — if they aren’t having fun, then find a team where it’s emphasized over all else.
Parents looking for signs that their young athletes feel supported by their coaches should take note of their children’s behaviors. Are they excited to go to practice? Do they talk about wanting more playing time? Do they voluntarily share stories about practice or games? Are they more animated and excited or deflated and frustrated when you ask them about practice? Can they name something their coach said that made them feel inspired or proud? Is there anything the coach said or did that made them feel upset or unmotivated? Meeting kids with curiosity will yield a lot of information. Ensuring they are learning and growing under a coach who they respect and enjoy will set them up for longevity in whatever sport they choose, at whatever level they play.
Parent the child first, the athlete second
In The Price She Pays we make the point early on that less than 2 percent of all high school athletes are offered athletic scholarships each year, according to the NCAA. From the start, participating in sports has to be about more than earning a spot on a college team and it’s a caregiver’s job to keep that perspective.
One athlete told us, “When I started showing promise and interest with running, my dad was all in with me…he got really invested.” To an extent, that enthusiasm is welcomed, until the relationship becomes all about performance. “I know that my dad loves me unconditionally, but I think sometimes it has felt conditional related to my achievement…I’ve gotten so much of my affirmation from him related to achievement.”
On the sidelines of every youth game across the country, we’ll find parents who take the wins and losses seriously — too seriously. The excessive emphasis on sports can make it difficult for young athletes to define themselves outside of it or cultivate other interests away from the field of play. Children need to know that a parent’s love and support aren’t contingent on outcomes. Disappointments are inevitable and athletes learn to get through them when they’re certain that their support doesn’t go away because they won or lost a game.
Sure, we’ll see those commercials this summer that pay homage to the parents who spent the past decades shuttling their kids to pre-dawn practices and nursing them through defeats along the way, now standing in the crowd watching the gold medal being draped around their child’s neck. Those ads are tearjerkers, but no parent has a secret formula for raising an Olympian. The best anyone can do for their daughter is to always emphasize the development of the whole person over the development of the athlete — and make sure she’s playing in a league that matches those values.
The hopes and dreams of today’s female athletes are bigger and more ambitious than ever — as they should be. It’s time to let go of how things have always been done and watch what happens when girls and women get the chance to train and compete in systems that honor their differences and talents. Parents play a pivotal role in shaping that experience and protecting it, in turn giving their daughters all the gifts that participation in sports can bestow throughout their lives.