Navigating Sports Culture: Key Insights for Modern Parents

Welcome to the Where Parents Talk podcast. We help grow better parents through science, evidence and the lived experience of other parents.

Learn how to better navigate the mental and physical health of your tween teen or young adult through proven expert advice. Here's your host, Lianne Castelino.

Welcome to Where Parents Talk. My name is Lianne Castelino. Our guests today are both journalists and parents. Donovan Bennett is a sports host, producer and writer at the CBC.

Kate McKenna is the host of the Northern Super League on TSN and an on air contributor for the Social on CTV. Donovan and Kate are raising two boys and they join us today from Mississauga. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you for having us.

Yeah, thanks for having us. Anytime away from our children is a blessing. Thank you for having us.

She loves them, I swear.

Yes, it's all said in love, definitely.

Now you both have a front row seat on the impact and ongoing evolution of sports culture, which then makes it really interesting when you are parents yourselves. So as parents, how much of that picture has and is shaping the way that you're choosing to raise your boys?

It's a great question.

I think one of the things I love most about the moment we're in in sports culture is that our kids are growing up going to Raptors games and going to Tempo games. And that's just one example.

You know, the other day in the driveway, I heard them playing basketball and I heard one of them say, I'm mabry and the other ones say, I'm slim. And that's not us saying you must support women in sports.

That's just naturally what they're absorbing because they go to men's games, women games, women's games, and they don't think twice about it.

No, they don't.

Our checking account thinks twice because, you know, thankfully the women's games in our country are very affordable, which is why, you know, we're big fans and love them and support them.

So it's interesting for me, one, I think my immediate thoughts when you ask that question, and it may not be an answer to it, but I think of my consumption of sports and my coverage of sports and how I've changed as a parent because, and we've talked about this a lot.

When I see parents of athletes, my appreciation for them is entirely different in terms of the level of sacrifice and care, dedication and the emotions that you would have watching, you know, a high performance athlete compete and succeed, but also fail. Our eldest loves to try and do backwards shots, you know, from behind his Head, no looking, shooting the basketball.

And he, if he gets one out of five in, you might as well tell me that he won the Larry o' Brien trophy because I'm so proud and so I can't imagine him winning a medal.

And you know, Kate's talked about this quite a bit like some of the viral moments that have come, if we use the past Olympics as an example, just been content with parents and their reactions and their pride. You know, sports does a great job of connecting a lot of different people from a lot of different walks of life.

But we all can have that empathy and that reference of what that must feel like. So I think that's one the big part of it.

And the other thing I remember when, when we had just had our first and it was first couple weeks in and I was going to an event and I was talking to someone who was having a child sooner, like what's it like? And tell me, you know, how is it?

And I said at the time, and Kate's experience is different than mine, so she can correct me, but I said at the time to this woman, you know, what kind of working in media, like pressure tests you a little bit for having a kid.

Like there's a bit of a callus there in terms of like, you know, beyond deadline, late nights, dealing with sometimes people with ego and are rational and in this case I'm talking about the toddler. But, but you know, on air talent can be the same at times.

And so, you know, some of the stress, the pressures, the time management, the risk management that comes from navigating a career in media is like in some ways raising a child because both are sink or swim in shark infested waters.

And as much as there's more literature and more data and more podcasts, thankfully about helping and, and learning, there's some stuff you just have to figure out for yourself because every child is different, every home is different, every parent relationship.

Is different, you know, and what makes it really interesting is that you guys see a lot of the behind the scenes stuff, right, that the average sports fan or television viewer doesn't.

So has working inside sports and having that perspective made you more comfortable with your boys playing them or more cautious or what's your thought on, on all of that?

Listen, I, I would be lying if I said I'm not more cautious about our kids playing certain sports.

Given what we know about hockey culture, given what we've read about in terms of CTE and head injuries with, with contact football, am I a little weary and I'M only speaking for myself here, not, not for DJ a little bit. I am.

And yet.

Sports for both of us has been such a, such a unifying space and has done so much good for us that although it doesn't matter to us at the end of the day if our kids play sports, we just want them to find something that they love and that gives them confidence.

There is a piece of us because we know those lessons, because we know all the good that can come from sports that, that hopes maybe they'll pursue it so they can take advantage of those lessons and they can absorb some of those lessons through osmosis. Especially in the era of screens that we're living in.

You know, I think so many parents are burnt out now for a variety of reasons that would be, you know, fodder for another podcast.

But I do think that one of those reasons is because our generation of parents is so acutely aware of screens and the damage they can do if used excessively. And we're not being holier than thou. Our kids are on screens and we're constantly thinking about it.

But I think one of the antidote to screen time is activities, things like sports. And so, so many parents we know are running themselves ragged trying to get their kids into sports and activities.

I think in part because it, it is an antidote, it is another option to constantly being on a screen to.

Follow up on that. Right. And it's part of the reason why so many people are investing in sport on, in all different levels.

But you know, with the increase of machine learning and AI and having less actual interactions with human beings, sports going to become more important, it's gonna be more valuable, it's going to be more important as a consumer. I mean, it's going to be more important in terms of our interpersonal relationships and learning how to have interpersonal relationship.

We had a child who, you know, was a covet baby. Essentially. The COVID started, you know, when he was less than a year old or just around a year old.

And the first, you know, formative couple years of his life outside of very close family, his interactions with most people, they were wearing a mask. And so, you know, I.

There's no doubt that it'll be studied, you know, for a long time, but there's no doubt that had an impact on him, you know, in a way that is entirely different than our youngest who quite frankly, doesn't know what a mask is.

So I think having, whether it's sport or some sort of extracurricular activities with other kids, other Humans, other authority figures that aren't your parents, I think will be increasingly important as the world changes.

I mean, we see it with our kids where, you know, their relationship with our television is they talk to it like they pick up the remote and they tell the television what they want to watch. On the flip side, you know, I've got my, you know, 90 year old grandmother who can't talk to her TV. She can't even turn her TV on, never mind.

Like, you know, there's, I got a call to come and fix, you know, her box and there's. Because the TV's not working and there's like a loose wire. So it's just, it's an entirely different world that they're growing up in. That's one side.

But, but on the flip side, to get back to your question, you know, I'll take it a different way. In terms of the behind the scenes that we see in media and in sports media.

I would say with our children have provided me certainly I don't want to speak for you, but is perspective. I remember when I went back to the office after we had our first and I was just like, oh, you think these are big issues? Like none of this matters.

We are talking and over talking and scheduling meetings to have meetings and stressing over all of these things and thinking that this is a big fire that we have to put out. Like at the end of the day, none of this really, really matters. A lot of it doesn't matter.

A lot of it doesn't actually matter in terms of the consumer or consumer behavior because as hard as we work in television, it often is the second screen to people at times.

But it gave me great perspective in terms of work, but also gave me perspective in terms of time and how much time I could invest in something was worth investing in something. And so the ability to triage what you're doing, how and why you're doing it, and for how long.

It just made that imperative because it was like, is this important?

Because I need to leave and get on the Gardner Expressway to be in port credit by 3:45 to make sure that my kid's not looking around saying where's dad at pickup.

So it provided great perspective in terms of helping to decide, like, what are the things that are important from a work standpoint, let's focus on those and be really good at those. And some of the other stuff, like it all come out in the wash.

I gotta tell you, Donovan, I've just had this flashback to me white knuckling it when I used to be a sports broadcaster at CTV in Montreal and tearing down the road to go get my son at 3 o' clock and he was usually the last one picked up. So thank you for bringing that back to my mind.

But yes, I totally can relate and so can many parents who are going to be listening to and watching this interview.

So on that note, like for either of you, what do you notice more now as parents that maybe you didn't notice before in that sports environment that we're talking about?

Well, I mean, and I may be misinterpreting the question, but the thing I notice is we, we have so many conversations with the future of media and consumption and TV and what's working and how are you going to set up this show and how are we going to schedule our programming. And so many of the decisions, like, forget about my kids who are 7 and 4 and what they'll be like in 10 years when they're 17 and 14.

So many decisions are not considering what people are like who are currently 17 and 14. A lot of decisions are made because people are thinking of an audience, of one themselves.

But our industry, I don't want to be hyperbolic, but, you know, our media industry as it is presently constituted, we will look back and it will be like Blockbuster, a thing that, like.

And I was actually telling high school kids about this, that there was this place called Blockbuster where you would go and you would pay money and there would be a wall of movies and you'd hope there'd be one that you wanted and then you take it to the front and then, you know, you'd return it and you'd have to rewind it so that you'd be kind to the next person. And they think I'm like literally a dinosaur. But that wasn't that long ago.

But the way, the way that we are creating television now will feel like Blockbuster if we aren't thinking of not ourselves. Because, you know, I'm one of the few people I know who still has linear cable.

We have to be thinking about what my kids want now but are going to increasingly want in the future. And so I just think that we have a massive blind spot that we haven't yet addressed because we don't really have to.

You know, sports specifically is the only appointment TV that is left. But like, that bill will come due at some point. But that's my perspective on it. But I'm sure you have a totally different interpretation.

I just look at the way that people in sports, the way that Leaders treat parents. And I was totally blind to that before when I wasn't a parent, these issues.

And I've apologized to friends, as I think so many of us did, who had friends who had kids before us. I couldn't possibly have understood their experience. And that was the same in the workplace.

I wasn't thinking about the way that moms and dads were experiencing that workplace. And now when I see leaders say, if your kid has to crash into the back of the screen during this zoom call, that's okay. And I'll give you an example.

In the nsl, there are multiple moms playing in this league.

And there were three coaches in particular last year who went out of their way to talk about how they were going to integrate those kids into the team. They allowed nannies at practices. One of the coaches let them set up a playpen in his office.

Two of the clubs set up lockers for the kids that had little nameplates. And one of the.

One of the coaches, Katrina Peterson, head coach of the Ottawa Rapid, she said it shouldn't be impossible for women to be pro footballers and moms. So I want to make that as. I want to make their. That as conducive as possible for them.

And she also said, you know, sometimes women who become moms actually become better soccer players afterwards, which feels counterintuitive given what happens to our bodies when we have children. But she said, it's a mental thing. It makes them realize that soccer isn't the only thing, and it gives them a lovely perspective shift.

And that really just stuck with me. So for me, it's the consideration of what moms are going through and what parents are going through in. In the workplace, on a team, in a.

In whatever your environment is.

But I have to imagine that soccer at that point doesn't become solely a job. It becomes where you find joy.

Maybe. Maybe.

Well, and to pick up on your point, Kate, I think we've seen plenty of examples at this point, whether it's Serena Williams or, you know, the PWHL or other leagues and athletes where parenting is part of their brand, let's call it. And they're very open about it, and it's out there and it's celebrated and it. And it makes it really an dimension to who they are.

So on that note, have either of you covered a story over your careers that really has shaped how you talk to your sons about sports, about being a boy, about that whole world of sports culture?

That's a good question. Does anything come to mind for you I don't know.

I mean, so, like, I did a story on Natalie at Chanwa and her coming back to play as a mother and what that looked like and physically, mentally, emotionally, what that looked like for her son, Maverick in, in the village. That really had to step up around her, make it possible to her to come back and make her fourth Olympics for Team Canada.

And one that gave me great perspective because it's like, man, you know, sometimes you're thinking, oh, this is so tough and so difficult. And then I literally watched a day in her life and I was like, oh, no, like what she is doing is difficult by herself.

So that gave me great perspective personally as a parent.

And, and it's funny, she not being a mother, was instrumental in fighting for women's extended parental care and coverage and better maternal rights in their last cba. And then she ended up being the beneficiary of it, you know, not necessarily planning to be a mother a couple years later.

And then it was only in that moment where she realized, oh, we thought we got a lot, but there's so much more that we could get and provide and so much more that we should normalize. Like having, for example, you know, a second room on the road, a hotel room for a caregiver to come be able to, to help and to rest.

So she's such a, an inspiration. But I think, like, there's not even coverage.

There's just little moments all the time via sports and the boys watching sports and we're going to games with them or watching games with them that are little windows to have conversations with them.

You talked about Marina Mabry, a star player for the Toronto Temple, an all Star, and, you know, it's kind of a ongoing joke in the NBA that she crashes out. There's like a crash out jar that they put money in every time that she kind of loses her mind.

And she's fiery and competitive and that's very much like our eldest son.

And so being able to sit and watch and show him, oh, look, she's really frustrated, but look, she's gonna go, she's gonna sit on the bench, she's gonna calm down by herself. It's okay.

Now her coach is going to talk to her and being able for him to witness someone else, you know, have their version of a tantrum, but work through it and they're not bad or evil or negative. It's. It's part and parcel with them being great, that's, you know, really instructive.

And then, you know, for, for those consuming the visual version of this, you can tell. Can tell from our voices that I'm black and Kate is white. So our.

Our kids are mixed and having references, so many references in sports for them to say, okay, you know, Lewis Hamilton, you know, I'm going to cheer for him as an F1 fan, because he looks like me and I get his story.

And, you know, just in this last World cup, you know, every time Jude Bellingham scored, which was a lot, they were really excited because, like, oh, my. My grandmother was born in England. We have family in England, so we're going to cheer for England. And that guy, he. He looks like me.

And it wasn't just about him scoring. There's touch points. Like, you know, there was a reporter in the mix zone in a wheelchair, and all of the players just walked by him.

And Jude Bellingham was the only one that stopped and gave him an interview. And so, like, that's another, you know, conversation starter that we can have based off of someone that they've connected with and.

And now, you know, have somewhat of a respect for.

There's no doubt that sports is a rich learning ground for all kinds of life lessons. At the same time, we also see the other side of it oftentimes, and certainly in the.

In the visual social media world that we live in, probably more so than ever. So is there anything about today's sports culture, for either of you that you feel you have to actively parent around?

I don't know if it's parenting it parenting around so much as letting stories of bad actors within the sports environment not scare us, but inform us and at least inform our behaviors and attitudes. I like to think of myself as an optimist. I like to see the good in everyone. And until you break that trust, I trust you.

But some of the stories that have come out of the sports world make you realize that, hey, you know, there are people out there, there are people in positions of power who sometimes abuse that power. So I think one of the things that. That we have tried our best to do is just to trust our gut.

If something in our gut is telling us this coach doesn't feel like a great fit for our son, not suggesting there's anything criminal going on or anything nefarious, but just to trust our parenting gut that this doesn't feel like a good fit, and we will act accordingly. For me, you know, I. I never want to let headlines of. Of bad actors dictate how I behave and how I parent or scare me or scare my kids.

I just want to use it to inform the way that, that I parent. Because this is all a crapshoot. We're all just trying our best. But that, that's certainly been my takeaway.

Yeah, I mean it's nothing untoward or nefarious, but you know, in high performance sport, which is ultimately what's on on our tv, what we coverage, it's very binary. It's competitive, it's win or lose.

Like they have a very clear understanding after watching the Olympics that if you finish first, second or third, you get to stand up there and get a medal. And if you don't, like, we kind of forget about you.

The issue is that they're seven and they're four and that sports certainly should be about fun and it shouldn't be binary about winning and losing. Especially with our eldest who's very competitive.

And so we're, we're trying to, you know, not take the Mamba mentality out of him, but also make him understand that at this age it is about, you know, life lessons, it's about skill development and no one is necessarily going to remember, you know, if you won the, the U18 flag football championship in 20 some odd years.

But I think it's also we, we because we have two very different kids, just like so many parents do. I've yet to meet a parent who says, oh, my kids are all the exact same. It's broadened my hope for what sports can be.

DJ and I are both very competitive. We didn't like to lose, but we could tolerate losing and it would just make us work harder. We have one son who is just like us.

He loves to win and if he loses, that just lights a fire.

We have another son who emotionally cannot tolerate losing to the point where sports right now, not for him because he really struggles with emotional regulation. But what it's made me think about as a parent is the purpose that sports should serve when your kids are this young.

Do I think there's a room for competition and for individual development? Totally. But do I also think there's room for participation? Sports is a vehicle for being active, for forming great friendships, for getting outside.

I do. And I think we really need to strike a balance in these young years when it comes to sports.

And I don't think that's something I would have realized had both my kids been your average competitors.

That's interesting because they are so young. So you know, what is age appropriate for a 7 year old and a 4 year old in this context?

And you know, I guess at this point you don't really have to worry about social media as an example, as maybe some other parents do have older kids.

But how do you treat, or how do you plan to treat the influence of sort of the highlight culture and the social media culture, especially as it relates to sports that they will be exposed to?

Yeah, I mean, we're already seeing it a bit with YouTube. Right. Which you know, by definition is a social media platform. I mean, it's interesting.

And by the time they're on it, social media might be so different and the platforms that they choose to use might be entirely different than they are now. And quite frankly, there may be more legislation around it.

It's funny that you asked that question because I've thought about social media in relation to them more so around them reading things about their mom and dad, you know, their mom being a female covering sports, their dad being a person of color, period, in, in the media and how they would react to that more so than maybe what their relationship would be to the highlight culture that you speak of. Because you know, my brother is in his mid-30s and I know how he reacts when he sees things, you know, written about me.

You know, my brother gets angry, you know, my wife gets sad and my mom gets scared. Right. And that's just their relation that they have to me. And so I can only imagine what a young kid might do might be a combination of all three.

So I, I, you know, full disclosure, I haven't thought about it in the context of sports as much because I was thinking about it in the context of, you know, if, if they read that, you know, I had a sports report that someone didn't like and you know, they happen to call me the N word. What about you?

I mean, listen, I am not dealing with what you're dealing with by virtue of my skin color. So I would never want to create an equivalency here in terms of what I'm about to say next because it is not the same, full stop.

When you ask about highlights though, it's a little thing, but for me I would rather show my kids highlights of a game holistically than individual player highlights. And I say that because the joy of team sports for me is the team part of it, right?

It's how did this team react when they got scored on, how did they get the win collectively? It wasn't just the goal scorer, it was that the keeper made a great save, punted the ball up, the central midfielder, went one on one, etc, etc, etc.

And we're starting to see these young athletes now with these massive followings on social media and it is so individualistic. I just don't want that to be the goal for my kid if they're gonna be into sports.

I want the goal, if they're gonna play team sports, to be about the team. So I think it's a little thing, but as much as possible focusing on the collective element rather than the individual one.

It's funny you talk about the highlights because you know, there was a, a play and any England soccer fans listening would know in the third place game, the last goal of the game and there's a tackle and Morgan Rogers in the middle of the field, he was taken down, probably should have been a foul, but the play kept going and Jude Bellingham, of course swooped in, got the loose ball, kept going and scored.

And our eldest, Desmond, you know, who at times struggles with regulating, his immediate reaction was they handled that so well, like they didn't get frustrated about the foul. They kept playing, they kept going and they got the goal. And, and he was saying that to me. I wasn't using it as a teaching tool for him.

So I found that aspect of it fascinating. The other thing that again noticing with my kids is they love to watch condensed games.

And part of that is because they're not old enough to stay up to watch games in full. So the next day they'll watch condensed games. But even when there's now a game live, they prefer to just watch a game on demand.

That is a condensed game.

And you know, if I look at myself when I was a kid, if I wanted to watch sports, I had to sit there and watch and watch the commercials, which, you know, when a commercial comes on, they're like, how do I skip ad? What's going on here? I had to watch commercials.

And then, you know, certainly as a basketball fan as a young kid, I had to watch a highlight show and I had to wait till the 45th minute of a 60 minute show and sit through all the hockey highlights that I did not care about to get to the one basketball highlight. And they're just in a very much more of an on demand culture.

And I wonder what that'll be like when they are, if they choose to continue to playing sports and you have to sit in the outfield for three hours and you might get three balls hit to you or you have to, you know, play football for two and a half hours and as a wide receiver you might get three balls thrown to you. I, I, I wonder how that experience will translate because they, they aren't seeing and experiencing sport in that way.

Unless they're literally at a live event, you know, stuffing their face with pop.

I'm laughing because I grew up in the era of no on screen graphics. You never knew what the score was until it went to commercial and you're like, now, I can't imagine. I need to know.

We only have about five minutes last.

But I did want to ask you, you know, is there anything about messages around masculinity in sports and how that is portrayed that concerns you, that you think about? And if so, what is your approach? Even though your boys are a little young, what is your approach going to be around that, explaining that to them?

For me, it's quite simple. It's just that there are many ways to be masculine, full stop.

And it goes back to the conversation we were having before about them learning lessons through sports. It's sort of like hiding the vegetables in the dessert. They don't really know that they're learning them.

Who is the basketball player who painted his nails?

Oh, he played for Duke.

Was it Duke?

Yeah. And is now playing for Oklahoma City. His name escapes me.

It's gonna bother me all good. He's gonna look it up because it's really gonna bother him. But our son loved to paint his nails.

There was a time where he loved to wear dresses, and that wasn't always met with positivity from other people.

But for him to see someone who's out there as a pro athlete, which in many ways is the epitome of masculinity by many North American standards, with his nails painted, for him to see Lewis Hamilton wearing a skirt. There's just so many ways to be masculine. There's so many ways to be feminine.

Conversations around pronouns have also crept into our home as a result of athletes that. That our kids have seen on the screen. So I think, again, for me, it's just reiterating. There's so many different ways to be a man.

And if they can see people on screen who represent that, even better.

Jared McCain, who's actually in the GTA right now, training with Shay Gilgis Alexander. Interesting note. Yeah. I mean, I would echo everything that you said. I mean, I.

The other thing I would say is if I use my own life as an example, coming up to me, I learned masculinity from my grandfather. I learned masculinity from my father and from my uncles, my cousins.

Eventually, when I was older, in the high school years, the vertical mentorship of being around your friends and learning from them. And I was lucky to have an environment with really good, solid friends who were still friends to this day.

You know, you, you learn those values, those traits, hopefully, if, if you're blessed to have that structure from those people and then you see other people where you can kind of augment and, and be inspired based off of the foundations that have already been built. So that would be my hope, is that, you know, he understands sacrifice and he understands responsibility and respecting women.

From his grandfather and his father and his uncle and from my brother in law, his uncle in law, I suppose.

And then when he sees Shay Gildas Alexander and how he treats his wife and how he does two hours of autographs before every shoot around, and how he names colorway of his shoe after his mom, he says, oh, like that's cool.

Like, that is so cool that he is such a stand up guy and that he loves fashion and is willing to push the envelope even if it means people might make fun of him. He's so confident in himself that he's kind of got, as the kids would say, that aura.

Like that's the kind of masculinity that I want to have in my life. But hopefully, you know, the, the nutrients that he gets originally is, is from, you know, the, the village that we're trying to build around him.

Lots of really interesting perspectives. Donovan Bennett, Kate McKenna, thank you so much for your time and your insight today.

Thank you for having us.

Yeah, thanks for having us. This is like a marriage counseling session. So, yeah, just tell us where we can, where we can send the, send the payment.

Thank you.

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