Children's participation in organized sport clubs: the role of parents' support and pressure
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47197/retos.v78.118818Keywords:
parental suport, parental pressure, youth sport participation, intention, parent-child perceptions, sports academiesAbstract
Introduction: Parents occupy a central role in youth sport, yet their supportive and pressuring behaviors are rarely examined simultaneously within the same family context in relation to children’s intention for continued participation.
Objective: The primary aim was to determine whether parental support and pressure, as perceived by both parents and children, predict the child’s intention for continued sport participation. A secondary aim was to examine whether parents and children differ in their perceptions of supportive and pressuring parental behaviors.
Methodology: A total of 305 parent-child pairs were recruited from football, basketball, and volleyball academies and clubs in Greece. Both parents and children completed structured questionnaires measuring perceived parental support and pressure on 7-point Likert scales, as well as a single-item measure of intention for continued sports participation.
Results: Multiple regression analyses revealed that parental support was a strong and significant predictor of intention for continued participation in both the parent model (β = .670, p < .001, R² = .439) and the children model (β = .656, p < .001, R² = .470), while parental pressure was not a significant predictor in either model. Paired-samples t-tests indicated that parents rated their own supportive behaviors significantly higher than their children perceived them.
Discussion: These findings are consistent with prior research highlighting the central role of parental support in sustaining youth sport participation, while the non-significant effect of pressure may reflect the relatively low-pressure levels in the sample.
Conclusions: Parental support is the primary driver of participation intentions. Parent-education programs aimed at increasing awareness of supportive behaviors and reducing the perception gap may contribute to improved youth sport retention.
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