| Sport psychology research has
documented the important rote of significant adults such as parents and coaches
in youth participants' psychosocial development and achievement motivation.
However, the situation concerning parents and coaches in youth sport is somewhat
of a conundrum—the roles of coach and parent are often synonymous, suggesting
not simply an independent relationship with the child participant. In recent years, a growing body of literature has emerged on parent influence in youth sport based on these and other theories. First, research shows that parents who are more supportive and less pressuring of their children are associated with youth participants who report higher perceived competence, enjoyment, and intrinsic motivation toward sport. Second, parents who encourage their child's participation and exhibit enjoyment of physical activity are related to children who report higher perceived competence and attraction toward physical activity. Finally, parents who hold stronger positive beliefs about their child's physical competence are associated with children who report higher self-perceptions, value toward sport, and physical activity levels. A prevalent phenomenon of North American culture is the parent-coach dual role. Most coaches in competitive youth sport are parents of one or more of their players. Brown estimated that about 90% of the volunteer coaches in a given community are a parent of one or more team members. Although one can forward several positive aspects of the parent-coach phenomenon, there is also the potential for youth to perceive stress from this parent-child relationship. Several researchers reported that adolescent athletes felt pressure from their coaches and parents to perform well, and desired that parents be sources of social support and leave skill and strategy instruction to the coach's domain. Collectively, anecdotal accounts and empirical data suggest that exploring the benefits and costs of parents coaching their children is a worthy topic from both theoretical and applied perspectives. Therefore, based on previous research on the role of parents and coaches in youth development, the purpose of the present study was to gain knowledge about the parent-coach phenomenon in competitive youth sport. We accomplished this purpose by interviewing youth soccer players who were coached by their parent, the child's teammates, and the parent-coach. We expect that child participants would identify both positive and negative aspects of having a parent as their coach, in line with previous research, but we were most curious to know if different issues would be raised about the unique parent-coach/child-athlete relationship. |