I don't understand at all where we got into this mindset of any kid having to be signed up for so much stuff, they have no time for anything else. Even rich kids didn't do that I was a kid/teen (I was born in 1969). You might have a little league once a year, and that'd be it, if even that. The poor kids out in the sticks (like me) didn't do anything but figure stuff out for themselves.
We didn't raise out kids that way. But some did.
I think it comes from: lack of other kids in the immediate neighborhood and/or the general feeling that kids can't be left alone to wander the neighborhood and make up their own activites.
