Not exactly politics

As a former youth sports official I find it informative that one of our national political candidates relishes the title "hockey mom," and presents it as some sort of badge of honour.

In ten years of experience, I found that parents of youth athletes who found it necessary to label themselves were uniformly ill-mannered, self-absorbed and boorish. In fact, I found civilised conduct a rarity amongst sports parents of any kind, and usually was a sign of people who had some other kind of life.

The self-identified sports parents put up a poor pretense of being interested in their children. They seldom ask whether the kids actually enjoy the sport they are playing. Such parents usually choose the child's sport. They experience sport vicariously; the child is a mere vehicle for parental ego. Whatever the children are doing, it is not for themselves. The children are status symbols like the big SUV, the McMansion, and the gas-guzzling adult toys. That's one reason to have so many of them.

When things don't go exactly as planned, sports parents can throw spectacular tantrums. Up this way, a couple of hockey parent tantrums have ended in homicide. As I recall, down in Texas, a cheerleading parent got involved in sport-related conspiracy to commit murder not long ago. These drastic outcomes don't include the many more wasted lives of children who, at some point, realised that they were just the toys of their self-obsessed parents, and took off on their own assertions of independence.

So no, calling yourself a hockey mom isn't going to make you any points under this roof.