Stress in youth sport: A developmental investigation of tennis parents

By C. Harwood, Camilla J. Knight. 2009

154 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Objective This study investigated the stage-specific stressors experienced by British tennis parents whose children were situated either in the sampling, specializing or investment stages of participation in the sport [Cote, J. (1999). The influence of the family in the development of talent in sport. The Sport Psychologist, 13 , 395–417]. Design and method A qualitative design was employed with semi-structured interviews conducted with twenty two British tennis parents; six parents representing each of the first two stages of sports participation and ten representing the investment stage. Data was analyzed through a process of inductive content analysis following the method proposed by Miles and Huberman [Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis . London: Sage]. Data matrices were developed for each category of parent to allow for the comparison of the data between themes. Results and conclusion Three general dimensions of parental stressor emerged: Organizational, Competitive and Developmental. Organizational stressors included demands related to finance, time, training and coaching, and governing body systems; competitive stressors related to behavior, performance and morality-related issues associated with their child's matches; and developmental stressors centered on educational issues, uncertainty of tennis transitions, and future decision making. While sampling stage parents encountered few developmental stressors compared to later stage parents, a range of competitive stressors were highly prominent. Organizational stressors were particularly foremost for specializing and investment stage parents. Implications are discussed with reference to further research into the parental stress process and to the importance of stage-specific parent education initiatives.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f74b755daff621fe3a8902237ad734f1783cd832

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. C. Harwood
2. Camilla J. Knight
3. M. Drummond
4. S. Elliott
5. A. Drew
6. Travis E Dorsch
7. N. Holt
8. N. Clarke

In Orthopedics and Sports Medicine

1. C. Harwood
2. Camilla J. Knight
3. N. Holt
4. A. Drew
5. M. Drummond
6. S. Elliott
7. Travis E Dorsch
8. N. Clarke

In Social Psychology

1. C. Harwood
2. Camilla J. Knight
3. M. Drummond
4. S. Elliott
5. Travis E Dorsch
6. N. Holt
7. A. Drew
8. N. Clarke

Citations in the corpus

• Parental stressors in professional youth football academies: a qualitative investigation of specialising stage parents (2010, methodology): “As noted earlier, a stressor was used as a sensitising concept (Blumer 1954) about which prior studies (e.g. Harwood and Knight 2009a, 2009b) had gained initial insights into an ‘individual sport’ setting.”
• Junior Tennis Players’ Preferences for Parental Behaviors (2010, background): “In response to the concerns regarding tennis parents the United States Tennis Association (USTA) and the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA: The organizing body of tennis in the United Kingdom) commissioned research to aid the development of educational materials for tennis parents ( Gould et al, 2006 , ”
• Parental Behaviors in Team Sports: How do Female Athletes Want Parents to Behave? (2011, result): “There are, however, some interesting parallels between the current findings and previous studies which have shown the stressors parents experience in relation to sport vary before, during, and after competition ( Harwood & Knight, 2009a ; Harwood & Knight, 2009b ).”
• Individual, relationship, and context factors associated with parent support and pressure in organized youth sport. (2016, background): “A number of qualitative studies (e.g., Dorsch, Smith, & McDonough, 2015; Harwood & Knight, 2009) also suggest that parents’ emotions may be linked to support and pressure.”
• Parents in youth sport: what happens after the game? (2017, background): “However, a lack of understanding in this regard may explain why many parents are unsure about how they are supposed to behave and what types of behaviour children want them to display (Harwood & Knight, 2009).”
• Parenting experiences in elite youth football: a phenomenological study (2014, background): “…sport, where the parent and 94 coach role may commonly overlap (Dorsch et al., 2009; Wiersma & Fifer, 2008), parents in 95 elite sport settings also experienced stress from a perceived lack of feedback, communication 96 and respect from coaches (Harwood et al., 2010; Harwood & Knight, 2009a).”