John McPhee’s classic, Levels of the Game, is a short book about a 1968 tennis match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. It expands from the narrative of the match into the stories of the men’s lives and their contrasting, excellent styles of tennis. Early on, McPhee notes that “it must have cost at least two hundred thousand dollars to produce this scene—to develop the two young men and to give them the equipment, the travel, and the experience necessary for a rise to this level.” Developing players of such tremendous ability costs more than most families can afford. McPhee writes: “The expense has been shared by parents, sponsors, tournament committees, the Davis Cup Team, and the United States Lawn Tennis Association, and by resort hotels, sporting-goods companies, Coca-Cola, and other interested commercial supporters.” An excellent tennis player, or a person who excels in anything, is almost always the product of support and influence from their family and from beyond it.
Arthur Ashe almost certainly would not have become a professional star if not for a medical doctor, Robert Walter Johnson. Dr. Johnson was so committed to elevating African Americans in tennis that he held tournaments on his personal court and then created an entire development program for emerging tennis talent. He had “young players live in his house in the summer, so they could practice as a squad and travel to tournaments together.” They practiced tennis, ate healthy, did chores, learned etiquette, and observed strict rules. Ashe’s father worked extra jobs and spent a lot of money on his son’s career, but he had help; “Dr. Johnson put thousands of dollars of his own specifically into Arthur’s career.” Johnson played a significant role in helping young African Americans break through in tennis, he even helped launch the career of Althea Gibson.
If we start listening, such stories are everywhere. Tennis star Nikola Djokovic refers to his “tennis mother” and “tennis father.” His actual parents had no background in tennis, very little money, and international politics made it hard for him to travel to tournaments, but two tennis professionals developed him. Djokovic says of Jelena Genčić, “She was a true mentor. And she worked closely with my parents, who gave her space and permission to spend a lot of time with me, also when we were not training on the court. I used to go to her home, and we did many different things that were shaping my mind as a human being, but also as a professional, as a young player who dreams of becoming a professional.” Djokovic did not have an unhappy home or uncaring parents, but his progress as an athlete still reflects the love and attention he received from other interested adults.
These stories are not unique to tennis. The writer James Baldwin was encouraged in the arts by several teachers. The first was Orilla Miller, who taught at P.S. 24, and took Baldwin to movies and museums, in her free time, on her own dime. They talked about art and books. Miller was not perfect, but she saw something in Baldwin when he was a child and she encouraged him, despite differences in age and race and background. It changed his life. When he got to high school, he had other teachers who noticed his talents and nurtured them.
David Sutherland’s 2006 documentary Country Boys is all about “the role of caring adults in the lives of young people.” According to PBS, Country Boys is: “For everyone who remembers what it was like to be young, the story of two Appalachian teenagers becoming men.” As we watch the struggles of Cody and Chris, we are reminded of how important it is that adults invest in young people, whether they are family or not. It makes all the difference.
We do not have enough encouragement to care for other people’s children and invest in them, even if we have no children or even if we have children of our own. Encouraging people to invest in their own families should not slow us down from encouraging people to invest in young people, full stop. We have so many social crises. Young men are struggling. Marriage and childbirth rates are down. Medical Assistance in Dying is on the rise. Social trust is down. Political polarization is up. Life expectancy is down. In some circles, the main advice is to reinvest in your family—build strong families, families are the building block of society. We also need to emphasize investing in the lives of non-relatives in a serious way.
It is right and good to have “skin in the game” with young people, whether or not you are related to them. That will not solve all our social crises, but it would help us move in the right direction. Think about how often children, even from happy and supportive families, find their calling or advance professionally due to someone outside of the family. Young people succeed when they are invested in by adults, relatives or not. Yet we do so little to acknowledge or encourage that. We need more people like the director Ryan Coogler, who brought his former writing professor to National Board of Review awards and walked the red carpet with her. She was one of the first adults to tell him he should go to Hollywood.
Caring adults are not just good for children; they are good for parents. Such care requires people caring about other people’s children and families willing to engage outside of their families. Some laugh at the idea that “it takes a village,” but parents feel less anxiety about their children when they know a “villager” will look after them if they are not on the scene. The more links that exist between the old and young, child-having and child-free, the kinder everyone will be to each other on planes and in restaurants. People will also worry less about bringing children into “this world” if they know that other people will care about and for their children. Think about the anxieties that people have about what will happen to their children when they are gone or what will happen to them if they have no children.
Around Christmas a news story circulated widely about a Cardiff family that invited a man to Christmas dinner who ended up staying 45 years. The family gave him a home and helped him get a job and then took him to work every the morning. That is an exceptional story, but many beautiful things come into the world through people extending themselves for others to whom they have no particular natural obligation. We have To Kill a Mockingbird because Harper Lee’s friends gathered enough money for her to take a year off from work to write. T.S. Eliot declined the “Eliot Fellowship Fund” that Bloomsbury authors organized for him, but the encouragement of his peers was obvious.
When we think about how to have a healthier society and stronger families, we need to remember the importance of caring for other people’s children, young and old. If we overemphasize family as the only path, people without children will consider themselves as having nothing to give and no way to contribute and children will miss out on help that they cannot get from parents and parents from help they cannot provide. Flourishing requires extending ourselves beyond familial obligations. We receive in return the fruits of a healthy society, including things of beauty like Arthur Ashe’s tennis game.