Though you may rarely see our adult kids climbing with us at ASCEND much anymore, Brian and I raised them around climbing. I climbed with them in utero (you can hear me read an essay about this here: https://pullupsinthebasement.substack.com/p/three), and we took them out climbing with us from the time they were itty-bitty.
Climbing outside with babies and kiddos was always a mixed bag. Some weekend/day trips were pretty good. Others were hellish. We knew we couldn't have high expectations to either climb a ton of pitches or at our limit, but if we could just be chill with whatever we got, we’d more than likely have a good day.
However, when it took so much planning and energy to get out the door, and we didn't know when all the planets would align so we could go again, it was hard not to have high expectations. And then at the end, we had to evaluate, given that there would always be some sort of disappointment, whether it was worth it. More often than not, it usually was worth it, even if it wasn’t perfect. Rarely did we get back and say, “My gosh, I wish we’d have stayed home!”
Recently when climbing at the New River Gorge with our friends Erin and Marcelle and their baby Zora, Erin said to me, wrangling little, squirmy and delightful Zora in her lap, “I’d rather come out here to do this than stay at home.” Amen, sister. You might have a peaceful but boring day at home, but wouldn’t it be better to have a slightly harder day outside in a beautiful place where climbing is a potential?
When Brian and I first started taking our babies climbing with us in the early 2000s, we didn’t run into many other families climbing together. If we did, we often knew them. Back then it was still more common for new parents to stop climbing outside altogether for a time, or for one partner to quit climbing and stay home with the kids while the other partner would continue going out climbing with friends.
Nowadays, it’s so much more common to see whole families outside climbing. Last year, Brian and I went to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. One day in particular we climbed at a crag that ended up being about a third populated with families with young kids. They trickled in with dogs and the ensuing, unavoidable noise and set up at one end of the crag, far enough away from where everyone was climbing. It was like a portable day care, and the chaos was corralled. There were always adults watching the little ones, and there was always a rotation of parents climbing. It was an ingenious plan. When I talked to a few of them, I learned that they were going to be there for an entire month. How fantastic. We didn’t have that kind of climbing community in our day, but we had enough. Climbing with your kids outside usually leads you to be more dependent on your community and friends in a good way. Someone’s got to climb. Someone’s got to watch the kids. Someone else’s got to spot or belay.
I wonder why there are more families out there these days. Here are my uneducated guesses:
1. There are just tons more people who climb now. So many people climbing in all the climbing spaces, inside, outside, upside down.
2. Does social media have something to do with it? Parents climbing with their kids is not new. Since people began climbing back in the days of yore, parents who climb take their kids with them, at least some of the time. We’re seeing this “phenomenon” more now because of social media. In the past couple of years, I’ve noticed a surge of famous climbers posting on IG about having kids and climbing. It’s fun to see photos of the professionals like Shauna Coxsey, Hazel Findlay, Tommy and Becca Caldwell, and Alex and Sanni McCandless Honnold, etc., etc., all out with their kids and sometimes in big groups with other families. Good for them.
But is there a correlation between the famous climbers climbing with their kids and the rest of us ordinary folk? Are we somehow motivated by what we see the influencers doing, or would we be doing it anyway? Personally, I think ordinary folk would be doing it anyway— Brian and I did even pre-social media. Certainly the elites on IG give us inspiration and possibly some good pro-tips on how to strap a pack-and-play to your back with two-inch webbing and duct tape, or how much is reasonable to pay a climbing nanny, or the best exercises to do when pregnant, or how to put your climbing shoes on when you can’t see your feet anymore, but I personally don’t think they are convincing the hoi-palloi to go climbing with their kids. The hoi-palloi are already doing it and, of course, posting about it themselves.
3. The younger generations of parents are more involved with their kids, in general. I haven’t done actual research on this, but being out and about, it appears to be so. Perhaps us Gen Xers started being more involved parents compared to our own parents’ generation, but now Millennials are even more likely to want to do everything with their kids.
4. Parents want their kids to climb more and better than they are able to. Back to Brian and I. Since we became parents in the days of yore, we noticed it was a thing to get your kids deeply involved in a sport or other skill-based activity at an extremely young age, like 3 to 5 years old— parental involvement as chauffeur and sideline heckler in hopes that their kids would end up being THE BEST. Okay, okay, the sports and activities were also good for them, got them outside, and kept them off screens for a little bit. Over the years we saw this in other sports/activities in which we allowed our kids to dabble (yes, only dabble— we had to keep climbing, people): soccer, baseball, BMX, and don’t let me forget, robotics. So maybe this is the case with some climbers, that they want to see what happens when they raise up kids to climb— they should be the next, Shawn and Brooke Raboutou, right? Climbing 5.14 or V10 by the time they are 10 years old, yes?
Brian and I tried to hold it loosely whether our kids would become climbers or not. Of course, it’s really cute when they want to climb as little kids, and super exciting when they send their first real Hueco Tanks boulder problem as a 10-year-old. But if they weren't interested, we tried not to push them. If they were interested, we tried to have what we needed to make it happen— the mini-climbing gear is adorbs, too. It was good enough just to get them and ourselves out of the house and out in nature. They’d play in nature and with nature. They’d get bored and stare at clouds and the leaves on the trees. They’d fight and whine. Ah, the good ole days.
I’m doubtful that number four is an actual reason that we see more families outside because it could be just as likely that parents don't care whether their kids climb, but taking the kids out climbing is the only way said parents can justify going out as much as they do— it’s gotta be a family thing. Which is a nice segue into my fifth and final reason for seeing more families out climbing…
5. It is more common for both partners in a family to be avid climbers and therefore, both want to climb and want to climb with each other. Brian and I took our kids out climbing with us because we both wanted to climb. There was no way in hell that either one of us was going to stay home and miss out. And we really like climbing together. Most of the time, anyway. I think this is true for a lot of people out there now, who started out as climbers and then added parenting into the mix. There is also the occasional family who all started climbing together once the babies were big enough.
