I've been reading a 15 year study by a well known (here) sports psychologist. He studied why children played sports, and why they stopped.

The single biggest reason, by far - kids stop playing sports because of parents who come and watch. Turns out parents think winning is important, which robs all the fun out of it.

As a counter anecdote; in high school I played 2 or 3 sports per season. I enjoyed them all immensely, despite the teams being (usually) objectively terrible. No parents ever came to watch (outside the ones offering necessary transport). We'd occasionally go a whole season without winning a single game. No expectations. Just having fun with my mates...

I'm really thankful it was my time, not my parents time.

Some families have multiple children. Those kids are quite frequently of different ages, and thus will have entirely different activities (most high school football teams will not allow 5th graders to play, for example).

Those activities frequently overlap. No, Cub Scouts does not care that the high school basketball game overlaps with the camping trip because Cub Scouts are not in high school. Parents are (still) not able to be in two places at a time.

This means that at least some of the time, the older kid goes to their game without their parents. (Because the younger child frequently cannot.)

If you are able to solve this for those parents, you can be the first $1B single-employee company.

Oh, here come Judge Judgerson McJudge with their authoritative definition of shitty parents.

People who have means sometimes are not able to see other people's contraints.

I meant kids that go to watch the game.

The football team has ~40 kids and basketball has ~12. The school has ~2000. At least in my area.

maybe because I don't live in a car-centric country, but I would just bike there myself with my friends, play, and bike home with my friends. From I was a kid until end of high school. Parents would often come to watch, but not always, and the fun was being with my friends anyways so it didn't matter.

Unless it is a final or another very important match for my kid, I understand that this game is for him, an opportunity for him to socialize, to try flirting with his cruch, to enjoy being a silly teenager doing the fucking things teenagers do when not supervised, without me, the fucking helicopter parent, sucking all the life from him to satisfy my narcisistic need to be seen as an "involved parent".

Small kids, of course, are a completely different story. But once they go through puberty, parents need to understand that their role in their kids life needs to change a little bit and their kids fucking need their own space with their friends.

At a typical US high school, not very many of the students are actually playing. For most of them, it's mainly a social event, something to take a date to, or a time to hang out in the bleachers with peers.

Even if you have one child playing (or on the bench, or in the band, or cheerleading) and have come to watch, your other similar-age children will likely not be interested in sitting with you. They will want to sit with their friends, and rightfully so!

I was in marching band (so I played at all the games). Is that not normal?

I guess it's just a generational thing, but my late Gen X mother was simply busy. Army drills twice a month will do that. I also concur with other responses that these were all social events anyway, so it's not like I was yearning for Mom to be there.