To read the full paper click Perfectionism in Parental Involvement

Three competition levels were considered — competing at a national championship level, competing at an international championship level, and winning international medals—and addressed three questions:

How many junior athletes reach an equivalent competition level when they are senior athletes? 

How many senior athletes reached an equivalent competition level when they were junior athletes?

The answers to these questions provide an answer to Question 3:

To what extent are successful juniors and successful seniors one identical population or two disparate populations?

To read the full paper click s40279-023-01840-1_230519_213612

In contemporary society, parents enrol children into organised sport from as young as three years of age. Although the benefits of sport participation are well documented, it is important to acknowledge early sport involvement can also prompt an increase injury risk, psychological burnout and/or sport dropout. Yet little is known about why parents enrol preschool aged children into organised sport, especially from a sociological perspective.

The results suggest that parental decision-making can be influenced by broader sociocultural, contextual, historical, and political forces which are perceived to construct, maintain, and perpetuate powerful ideologies that encourage children’s early sport involvement.

To read the full paper click Understanding parents motives for and beliefs abou_230517_090004.

Two studies employing cross-sectional and prospective designs were carried out across different samples of athletes of varied skill levels and sports.

In Study 1, we found athletes’ attachment to their sports coach was significantly associated with athlete thriving and mediated by psychological needs satisfaction.

Results of Study 2 found that athletes’ secure attachment to their mother and/or father positively predicted the experience of thriving at the competition while athletes’ insecure attachment did not predict thriving. Furthermore, athletes’ attachment to both mother and father did not predict competition performance.

Together, these two studies acknowledge the significant role that athletes’ secure attachment relationships with parents and coaches play in facilitating thriving in athletes. These findings have significant implications for research and practice.

To read the full paper click here fpsyg-12-694599.

However, there has been no qualitative research exploring players’ experiences of the release process. This study retrospectively explored players’ lived experiences of being released from a professional football academy, having completed a scholarship (from ages 16–18).

Four male football players (age 21.6 ± 1.5 years) who had experienced release from professional academies participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews. Data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Four super-ordinate themes were interpreted from the data: Foreshadowing release—“left out in the cold”, The process of release, Support during the process of release and New beginnings—“there’s a bigger world than just playing football every day”.

Players reported that their contract meeting was a traumatic experience, and they experienced psychological difficulties in the longer-term following release. Factors that compounded the players’ release were: a lack of aftercare being provided by the players’ professional clubs for their wellbeing, and a disuse of social support, which hindered their transition out of full-time football. Context relevant recommendations are made to help improve the release process for elite youth football players.

To read the full paper click here fspor-04-941482.

The present study explored the relative importance of related parental stressors and the associations between these stressors and various types of parental involvement. A total of 1260 parents completed an online form including demographic questions, questions on their children’s sport participation, and three self-report measures (PSSS, PISQ, and PASSES).

The results revealed that the multiple linear regression models for overall parental stress were statistically significant. The significant predictors were the parent’s educational level, the child’s current stage of sports participation, and the child’s sport injury (or the lack thereof). Furthermore, the stressors perceived by parents were positively associated with parental direct behaviour and pressure.

In conclusion parents are under more stress as their child’s stages of sport development increases, if their child has already had a sports injury, and the parents’ directive behaviour and experienced stress were significantly associated. The obtained results expand the existing knowledge of the complexity of parents’ importance in children’s sports careers.

To read the full paper click 0_ijerph-19-08015_220921_204324_220922_123554

One reason why perfectionism is increasing may be that rising competitiveness and individualism are requiring parents to engage in anxious, overly involved, and/or overly controlling forms of parenting. Yet, data to support this claim are limited and contested.

In two meta-analyses, we expanded upon and tested this claim by examining whether excessive parental expectations and harsh parental criticism are correlated with perfectionism (Study 1) and whether these perceived practices are changing over time among American, Canadian, and British college students (Study 2).

In Study 1, meta-analyses found small-to-moderate positive mean weighted effects of parental expectations and parental criticism on self-oriented and other-oriented perfectionism, and large positive mean weighted effects of parental expectations and parental criticism on socially prescribed perfectionism.

In Study 2, using cross-temporal meta-analysis, we found that mean levels of parental expectations and parental criticism had linearly increased between 1989 and 2019 among college students. With rising competitiveness, individualism, economic inequality, and pressure to excel at school and college as the societal background, increases in parental expectations and parental criticism offer the most plausible explanation for rising perfectionism to date.

To read the full paper click bul-bul0000347_221226_082142

Our meta-analysis involved 51 international study reports with 477 effect sizes from 6,096 athletes, including 772 of the
world’s top performers.

Predictor variables included starting age, age of reaching defined performance milestones, and
amounts of coach-led practice and youth-led play (e.g., pickup games) in the athlete’s respective main sport and in
other sports. Analyses revealed that (a) adult world-class athletes engaged in more childhood/adolescent multi-sport
practice, started their main sport later, accumulated less main-sport practice, and initially progressed more slowly than
did national-class athletes; (b) higher performing youth athletes started playing their main sport earlier, engaged in
more main-sport practice but less other-sports practice, and had faster initial progress than did lower performing youth
athletes; and (c) youth-led play in any sport had negligible effects on both youth and adult performance.

We illustrate parallels from science: Nobel laureates had multidisciplinary study/working experience and slower early progress than did national-level award winners. The findings suggest that variable, multidisciplinary practice experiences are associated with gradual initial discipline-specific progress but greater sustainability of long-term development of
excellence.

To read the full paper click 2021-gullich_230120_214251

Recreational programs are generally lower-cost for families, emphasising inclusive participation among all players. Conversely, competitive travel and Olympic-development programs typically necessitate that players try out and be selected in order to train and play, and include more intense skill development and competition, thus requiring families invest greater time and financial resources in their children’s sport development.

In this latest work from Amanda Visek and Heather Mannix they dig deeper into their original work looking at gender, age and level of play to see if there are any specific differences in responses across these different groups from the original study.

To read the research paper please click here.