In recent research, published in Leisure/Loisir, SSI Research Chair and Sociology Professor Chris Knoester teamed with Dr. Chris Bjork (Vassar College) to study changes in parents’ involvement in youth sports, across the past 60 years. This work built upon their initial inquiry into changes in youth sports participation, across recent decades. 

It certainly seems that parents have become more involved in their children’s activities, including their sports pursuits, across generations. Also, sports commitments now seem to demand more time, money, and other forms of support from parents. But, there is a lack of empirical evidence about the extent to which changes have occurred, for whom, and why.

In response, Knoester and Bjork used data from the SSI-funded 2018-19 National Sports and Society Survey, a large national survey of 4,000 U.S. adults, to examine respondents’ reports of the extent to which their parents attended their sporting events, spent time otherwise supporting their youth sports endeavors, and spent money to enable their sports participation, while growing up.

Indeed, they found evidence that parents’ attendance at their children’s sporting events, time spent otherwise supporting their children’s sports pursuits, and expenditures increased across generations. Also, socioeconomic differences in parental involvement emerged and became particularly salient among the youngest generations. Moreover, family (e.g., sports fandom, athleticism) and community sport (e.g., community’s passion for sports, provision of affordable recreational sports offerings) cultures appeared to direct parents’ behaviors. Parental involvement was also linked to the durations and levels of their children’s sports involvement, too, of course.

The authors understand their findings as reflecting an increased emphases on sports participation activities, heightened levels of parental involvement and investment by especially more privileged parents and those who are immersed in sport cultures, and the extraordinary levels of sports-related involvement that occur when children are highly committed to sports activities—but relatively modest levels of involvement, otherwise. For example, on average, parents were only estimated to attend their child’s sporting events “once a month,” spend time otherwise supporting their child’s sports pursuits “once a month,” and spend “a little bit” on their child’s sports participation, in a typical year. But, highly committed athletes who were situated in sports-oriented families and communities and came from higher socioeconomic status families had parents who were highly involved in their sports pursuits. 

The results also contribute additional evidence that children’s sports participation can be seen by parents, and potentially their children, as a strategized means for obtaining not only health and well-being outcomes, character development, social interactions, and enjoyment – but also social status and social mobility opportunities.

To read more about this study, please reference Jeff Grabmeier’s write-up for OSU News. The authors also appeared on WOSU’s “All Sides with Amy Juravich” to discuss their work.