Chapter 14 - Parent involvement in youth sport: developmental considerations regarding children, adolescents, and emerging adults

Abstract

Youth sport occurs primarily through the complex and repeated interactions of multiple individuals in the youth sport ecosystem. Among the many individuals who engage with youth in sport, parents have arguably the most significant impact on athletes’ early experiences. As parents continue to invest a growing percentage of resources into their children's sport participation, what constitutes “appropriate” and “optimal” parent involvement has become an important area of debate among researchers, stakeholders, coaches, and parents. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight parent involvement in youth sport as an important group dynamics process that occurs across the three formative life stages of childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood. In pursuing this aim, the chapter focuses on how interdisciplinary research on families has informed the study of parent involvement in youth sport and explicates how this work may be extended via a group dynamics lens.