Elterlicher (Über‑)Ehrgeiz im Nachwuchsleistungssport

Abstract

Parental investments in competitive youth sport are just as indispensable as manifold. Parental ambition against this background can be thought as a particular, inner psychic resource which is brought into the young athletes’ career in a similar way just like periodic chauffeur services or financial support. Parental ambition can be defined as an increased achievement motivation by the guardians; it is associated with high expectations and striving for control of the children. In this article, the attempt is to make plausible both parental ambition and parental over-ambition by using various theoretical models. Regarding the emergence of an innocuous or possibly functional type of ambition and the pathological form of over-ambition, an inadequate personality development in over-ambitious parents is believed to be the distinctive feature. In order to understand better the genesis and consequences of excessive parental ambition, thoughts are presented which are psychoanalytic in nature. In this context, the role-theory by the German family therapist Horst-Eberhard Richter and Heinz Kohut’s self-psychology are fundamental for providing explanatory performance. Moreover, the expectancy-value model by the pedagogical psychologist Jacquelynne S. Eccles has been proven useful in order to account for interindividual and interfamilial variations in parental ambition on an everyday basis. Finally, implications for scientific research and sport practice are presented.