For many children around the world and especially in the United States, there is a big push to be doing many sports and extracurriculars from a young age. As these kids get older and become more passionate about their activities, they tend to want to be in programs that will get them to the highest level of ability possible, and the best way to do this is to join a club. The problem with clubs, though, is the sky-high rates that parents must pay for their children to be members.  

On average, parents with their kids in clubs spend 100 to 500 dollars per month per kid (Smith). That may not seem very expensive at first, but it begins to add up. Clubs and other higher-level programs for kids should be required to keep their prices down so that children with talent can get the practice they need to get even better and so that parents can help to motivate their kids to keep up their hard work instead of discouraging them because of the money their activities drain.  

With game play so expensive, many kids, especially as the prices go up with their age, are not able to be in the same leagues as others. This can lead to a decline in their skill level, since they aren’t able to afford the training for higher levels, which over 20 percent of families with children in sports are paying 1,000 dollars per month for their kid to do (Smith). This puts families not willing to pay these prices at a disadvantage, since their child won’t get the coaching and practice they need to reach their full potential. Not only may their skill level stay lower, but there is a much slimmer chance that they will make school teams or get lead roles once they reach high school, since the coaches tend to be more familiar with more expensive clubs and will therefore already have some knowledge as to how good the players on those teams are.  

Along with creating skill level gaps between children coming from high and low income families, high prices for sports and other activities can cause parents to completely cut their kids from teams. For a lot of families, “financial burdens may override a child’s interest in pursuing school activities” (Mostafavi). This means that families with financial stress tend to put other expenses in front of having their children participate in extracurricular activities, which is reasonable. 

Some may argue that clubs can’t just lower their prices; that they have employees and bills to pay. Yes, this is true, but does every family really need to be paying ridiculous prices for the club to pay their instructors? Even if they do, they could set up scholarship funds or auctions to get kids from lower income families into their programs. This way, the club gets the same amount of income and more children get the advantages that come from being a member. 

Young children developing passions for sports, theatre, or whatever else they are doing should not have to abruptly end their passions or potential careers just because their parents had to put the water bill in front of their extracurriculars. Clubs for music, sports, theatre and other activities should lower their prices so that more kids can further test their talents and develop their skills.