This is kind of where I'm at. Now, take this for what it's worth. When my daughter started playing organized soccer, she was 6 years old. When you sign up for soccer, it's for August, through June. Now granted, there is some time off in there for breaks and Holidays, but it goes from Fall Soccer, to Indoor, then in March starts outdoors again until June. At 6. She also wanted to try Basketball, softball and had considered cheerleading even.
Well, after that first year, because she was getting tired of always playing sports, she quit soccer for a few years, then picked it up again this year at age 10. She immediately went back to being one of the top 5 on her team because she is highly athletic, but again since the season just ended and she was still playing Basketball and softball, decided she'd had enough of it and was done with soccer.
Now I understand specialization in sports as you get older, but come on, it doesn't leave time to play anything else and give other sports a try as you are younger. Most teams were hesitant to take on my daughter because of her time off. So, not only are they asking my kid to decide at age 6 what sport she wants to play for the rest of her life, but if she decides at age 10 that she might want to play soccer, most of the coaches aren't willing to take her on the team.
I read this guys article, and I don't necessarily agree with him. I don't think it's that we steer our kids to other sports, it just seems that those in the soccer world feel so passionately about it, that they don't think you should do anything else. I'm sorry, I follow a mantra of "Well Rounded" In all parts of life, not just sports. Like school, even though I was in Graphic Design, I still had to take some math, English, History etc.
Eventually I believe our culture will change and we will accept soccer more and you will see more kids dedicate their life to it, but for now, it's just not there. Most of the parents I know, consider the game boring and would rather not be there. If it wasn't for their kids, they'd never watch any soccer. So, if you aren't making it easy for parents, like me, it's easy for me to say, "Great, I'm glad you aren't playing next year."
So, it's not so much that we are steering our kids to other stuff, it's that they have other options. In other parts of the world, that's the game people play, here we have more options and personally, I like that. I'd gladly trade being a world power in soccer knowing that I still have basketball, hockey and football on TV to watch. And that my kids have other options besides soccer to play.