Parenting experiences in elite youth football- A phenomenological study 27-03-14 final.pdf (90.4 kB)
Parenting experiences in elite youth football: a phenomenological study
journal contribution
posted on 2015-03-16, 15:51 authored by Nicola J. Clarke, Chris HarwoodObjectives: The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of parents of elite specializing stage
youth footballers.
Design: A descriptive phenomenological approach guided the study design.
Methods: Data from interviews with five mothers and five fathers of youth players registered to English
football academies were analysed using descriptive phenomenological analysis (Giorgi, 2009).
Results: Three essences characterized the phenomenon of being a parent of an elite youth footballer:
parent socialization into elite youth football culture; enhanced parental identity; and increased parental
responsibility. Parents' socialization into the football academy culture was facilitated by their interaction
with coaches and parent peers, highlighting the social nature of parenting. Being the parent of a child
identified as talented meant that parents experienced enhanced status and a heightened responsibility to
facilitate his development. Although parents were compelled to support their son in football, their instinct
to protect their child meant they experienced uncertainty regarding the commitment required to
play at an academy, given the potential for negative consequences. Together, these findings illustrate that
parents experienced a transition as their son progressed into the specialization stage of football. We
postulate that formal recognition of a child as talented contributed to this transition, and that knowledge
of sport and perception of the parentechild relationship shaped how parents adapted.
Conclusions: This study provides a new way of understanding the psychological phenomena of parenting
in elite youth football. Implications for practitioners working with parents in sport are provided.
Funding
This research was supported by the English Football Association as part of its Psychology for Football research strategy.
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
Psychology of Sport and ExerciseVolume
15Issue
5Pages
528 - 537Citation
CLARKE, N.J. and HARWOOD, C.G., 2014. Parenting experiences in elite youth football: a phenomenological study. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 15 (5), pp.528-537.Publisher
© Elsevier LtdVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2014-05-20Publication date
2014-05-29ISSN
1469-0292Publisher version
Language
- en