Should basketball practice trump family vacation?

Spend more time as a family. Eat dinner together. Go on vacation, even if the best you can do is turn off the phone and hunker down together in the den. It seems like you can’t pick up a newspaper or community flier or women’s magazine without being told that nothing is better for kids than hanging out with their family.

Why, then, do we allow athletic coaches — often in the same schools that are espousing more family time — to ask — nay, demand — that parents forgo a family vacation so their children can get in more  practice time? A woman I know whose son plays on his high school basketball team is determined not to be badgered. Her family is a third of the way through their project to travel to every state in America. Next up are Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi, which they plan to visit during Christmas break. The coach doesn’t want the boy to go. The family is sticking with their plan, but not without a lot of tension and guilt.The mother of another boy on the team wants to take him skiing, but the boy is too scared to miss a practice.

Is it fair to ask parents and kids to make these kinds of choices? I know some parents who refuse to let their children miss a practice or a game, saying that it’s an important life lesson to know that when you sign up for a team it means that you keep your commitments to the team. But shouldn’t we honor our commitments to our families, too?