A new analysis of federal time-use data shows Sunday religious participation among parents of school-age children has fallen by nearly 38% since the mid-2000s, while expanding youth sports commitments are placing greater demands on family time and finances.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Sunday mornings are increasingly occupied by youth sporting events rather than religious services for American families, according to a new analysis showing a substantial decline in worship participation among parents of school-age children. The findings come as organized youth sports continue expanding, creating scheduling conflicts that religious leaders and researchers say are changing how families spend their weekends.
An Axios investigation published Sunday found that the proportion of parents with children ages 5 to 17 participating in religious activities on Sundays declined from 26.8% during 2003-2007 to 16.7% during 2021-2024. The decline represents a reduction of 10.1 percentage points, or approximately 38% relative to the earlier period.
The analysis drew on the American Time Use Survey, an ongoing federal survey administered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that measures how Americans spend their time. The survey records activities undertaken during a designated 24-hour period, allowing researchers to examine long-term changes in work, family responsibilities, recreation and religious participation.
The figures indicate that fewer parents of school-age children reported spending time on religious activities during Sundays in the more recent period. However, the survey does not establish that youth sports directly caused the entire decline, which also occurred alongside broader changes in American religious affiliation and participation.
The changing schedule of organized youth sports has nevertheless become an increasingly visible source of conflict for families attempting to maintain regular worship attendance.
Many youth sports programs now operate beyond the traditional weekday practice and Saturday game schedule. Competitive leagues, club organizations and regional travel teams frequently organize tournaments over entire weekends, with preliminary rounds on Saturday and elimination games or championship contests on Sunday.
The arrangements affect families involved in baseball, basketball, soccer, softball, volleyball and other sports where participation can involve travel across cities or state lines.
For parents whose children participate in competitive programs, Sunday may require an early departure, several hours at a tournament venue and additional travel before returning home.
Those commitments can overlap directly with religious services, particularly at congregations that offer worship primarily on Sunday mornings.
Linda Flanagan, author of Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports — and Why It Matters, told Axios that missing church because of sporting commitments has become widely accepted among families involved in competitive athletics.
“The idea of missing church for sports is just assumed,” Flanagan said.
Flanagan has written extensively about the increasing commercialization of youth athletics and the expectations placed on parents and children participating in organized sports.
Her work examines how competitive leagues and travel teams can create pressure on families to prioritize tournaments, training and team commitments, sometimes at the expense of other activities.
The trend has developed as youth sports have become a multibillion-dollar industry encompassing league fees, private coaching, specialized equipment, travel expenses, tournament registrations and commercial sports facilities.
For families seeking opportunities for children to compete at higher levels, participation may involve year-round commitments rather than a single school or community sports season.
Coaches and team organizers may expect players to attend tournaments regularly, while parents can face difficult decisions when religious services, family gatherings and other responsibilities conflict with scheduled competitions.
The growth of organized athletics has also coincided with an increase in the proportion of children participating in sports programs.
According to the Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative, approximately 58% of American children ages 6 to 17 participated in a sports team or took sports lessons in 2024.
That represented an increase from the 55% participation rate recorded in 2023, based on the National Survey of Children’s Health, a federal survey that collects information from parents about children’s well-being and activities.
The rise suggests that organized sports are reaching a larger share of American children, even as participation costs and time requirements continue increasing.
Project Play, an initiative of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, has studied those changes while encouraging broader access to recreational athletics.
Its research has documented growing financial pressures on families, particularly those participating in club and travel programs.
A national survey conducted in partnership with Utah State University and Louisiana Tech University found that parents spent an average of $1,016 on their child’s primary sport during 2024.
That amount represented a 46% increase compared with 2019, outpacing cumulative inflation during the same period.
The expenses include registration fees, equipment, uniforms, training, travel and other costs associated with organized participation.
Families whose children participate in competitive travel programs may spend considerably more, particularly when tournaments require hotels, transportation and meals away from home.
The financial commitment can affect whether children participate at all, while families already involved in athletics may feel pressure to continue paying for increasingly expensive programs.
The Aspen Institute’s analysis of youth sports spending found that the rising cost of participation has become a significant concern for parents and organizations seeking to make sports accessible to children from different economic backgrounds.
The research also identified the substantial amount of time parents devote to supporting their children’s activities.
According to an August 2025 Project Play report, parents spent an average of three hours and 23 minutes on sports-related responsibilities during each day their child had a practice or game.
That figure included much more than the time spent watching competitions.
Parents reported driving children to practices, washing uniforms, maintaining equipment, preparing meals, communicating with coaches and discussing their children’s athletic experiences.
The responsibilities can resemble an additional part-time job, particularly for families with multiple children involved in different sports.
The survey found that parents of older children generally devoted more time to sports than those whose children were younger.
Parents of athletes ages 15 to 18 reported spending approximately 223 minutes per sports day on related activities, compared with 179 minutes among parents of children ages 6 to 10.
Geography also influenced the demands.
Rural parents reported spending an average of 225 minutes per sports day, compared with 208 minutes for suburban parents and 189 minutes for urban parents.
Researchers suggested that families in rural communities may face longer drives because specialized coaching facilities and organized competition are less readily available nearby.
The findings were based on an online survey of 1,848 parents of children ages 6 to 18 who participated regularly in sports. The survey was conducted in November and December 2024 and included respondents from every state and the District of Columbia.
The researchers described the sample as nationally representative, although the published methodology summary did not provide a margin of sampling error or detailed weighting information.
The results nevertheless illustrate how sports participation can shape household schedules across much of the week.
For children participating in their primary sport during the season, parents reported an average of nearly three days of coach-led practice, two days of individual training, two days of informal play and nearly two days of games or competitions each week.
Those activities can overlap, but their combined frequency demonstrates how thoroughly organized athletics can occupy family calendars.
The time requirements extend beyond direct participation.
Approximately 62% of sports parents reported volunteering with their children’s teams or clubs, contributing an average of more than four hours per week.
Volunteer duties included coaching, helping with concessions, coordinating schedules and organizing team activities.
Such responsibilities can strengthen relationships among families but also reduce the time available for other community organizations, including religious congregations.
The combination of travel, financial commitments and volunteer responsibilities has created a competitive environment for families attempting to balance athletics with religious observance.
The decline in Sunday worship participation is occurring alongside wider changes in American religious life, including the growth of religiously unaffiliated populations, reduced attendance at organized services and the closure or consolidation of some congregations.
These developments complicate efforts to determine how much of the decline among parents can be attributed specifically to sports.
The American Time Use Survey measures activities reported during individual days, not the reasons respondents participated or did not participate. A parent who attended a weekday service, practiced religion privately or watched a livestream at another time would not necessarily be counted as participating in religious activities on the Sunday measured.
Likewise, a family participating in a Sunday tournament may already have attended religious services infrequently for reasons unrelated to athletics.
The Axios findings therefore identify a significant shift in reported Sunday activity without establishing a direct causal relationship between increased sports participation and declining religious attendance.
Religious leaders interviewed for the report nevertheless described scheduling conflicts as a recurring concern.
Tim Morey, lead pastor of Life Covenant Church in Torrance, California, said organized sports have not necessarily caused families to sever relationships with their congregations.
Instead, tournaments and other commitments often make participation “more spotty,” reducing the consistency with which parents and children attend worship.
Morey described families attempting to accommodate both activities by dividing responsibilities between parents. In some households, one parent takes a child to a sporting event while the other attends church with siblings.
Other families make arrangements to attend portions of religious services before traveling to competitions.
Some children arrive at church in their sports uniforms, participate in the opening minutes of worship and leave for scheduled games.
Families traveling to tournaments may also use online services to maintain contact with their congregations, streaming worship from hotel rooms or other locations.
The accommodations allow some households to preserve elements of religious participation, even when attending an entire Sunday service becomes impractical.
However, Morey expressed concern about the message children may receive when sporting commitments consistently take precedence over worship.
He warned that if children learn that sports are more important than religious observance, “then everything is more important than weekly worship.”
The concern reflects a broader debate among religious leaders about how congregations can remain central to family life when competing activities increasingly occupy traditional worship times.
Some churches have responded by offering Saturday evening services, additional Sunday worship opportunities and online programming.
Others have developed youth activities or family gatherings outside conventional Sunday morning schedules, allowing participation by people whose work or recreational commitments make regular attendance difficult.
These adaptations can help congregations reach families with complicated schedules, although they may also change longstanding expectations about shared worship and weekly community gatherings.
The growth of livestreamed services, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, has created additional opportunities for people to participate remotely.
Online worship may be especially convenient for families traveling to tournaments, but virtual attendance does not necessarily provide the same opportunities for face-to-face relationships, volunteer work or participation in congregational activities.
Religious leaders therefore face the challenge of balancing flexibility with the importance many faith communities place on gathering together.
The changes also raise questions about the role organized sports now play in providing community connections that religious congregations have traditionally offered.
Parents often spend hours together at practices and competitions, forming relationships through shared experiences, travel and support for their children’s teams.
For some families, these activities create regular social networks comparable in frequency to those developed through religious organizations.
Flanagan acknowledged that sports can help provide a sense of belonging, particularly for parents who spend substantial portions of their weekends attending the same events.
However, she also noted that competitive environments can complicate those relationships.
Disagreements over playing time, roster positions, coaching decisions and access to opportunities may create tensions among families who otherwise share strong connections through their children’s teams.
The pressure can be particularly intense in programs where families invest substantial amounts of money and believe participation may influence future athletic opportunities.
Research from the Aspen Institute suggests that many parents are uneasy about the demands associated with modern youth sports.
In its parent survey, researchers found that 69% of respondents were satisfied with the overall sports culture in the United States, but other findings revealed considerable interest in reducing travel and changing competition schedules.
Separate research cited by Project Play found that nearly eight in 10 parents supported reducing travel requirements for youth sports.
Approximately 72% favored a model involving fewer games and more practices, while 73% believed youth sports had lost sight of their original purpose of providing enjoyment and teaching teamwork.
Those findings suggest that concerns about increasingly demanding schedules extend beyond religious participation.
Families may also struggle to maintain adequate time for schoolwork, rest, unstructured play and relationships outside organized athletics.
The commercialization of youth sports has contributed to those pressures as private clubs, tournament operators and specialized training programs compete for participants.
Unlike traditional recreational leagues, which often rely on local facilities and volunteer coaches, competitive travel programs may operate across larger geographic areas and generate revenue through registration fees, events and training services.
Weekend tournaments are particularly attractive to organizers because families are generally available to travel when school is not in session.
Scheduling weekend tournaments allows organizers to accommodate teams traveling from different communities, but it also places competitions in direct conflict with Sunday religious services. As club and travel sports have expanded, families have increasingly found themselves choosing between commitments to their children’s teams and participation in other activities that traditionally occupied weekends.
For parents, those decisions can become more complicated when coaches expect consistent attendance at tournaments or when missing a competition could affect a child’s position on the team. Families with several children participating in different activities may face additional difficulties coordinating transportation, religious observance and household responsibilities.
The financial investment can also influence those decisions. Parents who have paid substantial registration fees, purchased equipment and arranged travel may be reluctant to miss competitions, particularly when tournaments represent a major component of their children’s athletic programs.
Religious leaders have responded by encouraging families to reconsider how they establish priorities while acknowledging the benefits that organized sports can provide. Athletics can promote physical fitness, discipline, teamwork and friendships, and many churches maintain their own recreational programs as part of youth ministry.
The concern expressed by some pastors is not necessarily that children participate in sports, but that increasingly demanding schedules leave families with fewer opportunities for regular worship and involvement in congregational life.
The findings also suggest that the relationship between youth sports and religious participation may differ according to household circumstances. Families attending congregations with multiple service times may have more flexibility than those belonging to smaller churches that offer only one Sunday gathering.
Religious traditions also differ in their schedules and expectations for communal worship. The analysis of Sunday activities is especially relevant to Christian congregations, while Jewish, Muslim and other religious communities observe different worship schedules and may experience separate conflicts with organized athletics.
For researchers, the changing patterns raise questions about whether youth sports are replacing some of the social functions previously performed by religious institutions or simply competing for time within an already crowded family schedule.
The American Time Use Survey offers evidence of how Sunday activities have changed over two decades, while the Aspen Institute’s findings document the increasing financial and time commitments associated with children’s athletics. Neither dataset establishes that organized sports alone accounts for the decline in religious participation.
The results nevertheless highlight a measurable shift in American family routines. Sunday worship participation among parents of school-age children has fallen from more than one-quarter to approximately one-sixth, while organized youth sports participation has increased and competitive programs have become more demanding.
As congregations experiment with alternative service times and online worship, families continue navigating competing expectations involving faith, athletics, school and community involvement. For churches seeking to maintain regular participation among parents and children, the expansion of weekend sports represents one increasingly important scheduling challenge.
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