Stress in youth sport: A developmental investigation of tennis parents

Parenting experiences in elite youth football: A phenomenological study

“…The 60 difficulties parents faced included providing effective support for their child in challenging 61 situations (such as dealing with injury or a lack of motivation) and helping young athletes 62 cope with the demands of their sport. This study highlighted how children can influence 63 parents' experiences in sport; a finding which has been supported by Knight and Holt (2013), 64 who identified that children's performances, on-court behaviours and emotional reactions to 65 matches affected parents' experiences of watching junior tennis tournaments, and were in fact 66 a source of stress for some parents (Harwood & Knight, 2009a, 2009b. These exploratory 67 studies point toward the significance of parent-child interactions in sport settings, but did not 68 explicitly examine parents' experiences of this relationship within the scope of their research.…”

Educating and supporting tennis parents: A grounded theory of parents’ needs during childhood and early adolescence.

“…Players concluded that supportive 20 parental behaviors were behaviors that allowed parents to display support for and belief in their 21 children without placing pressure upon them to win (Harwood & Knight, 2012). However, these 22 studies did not explore the individual factors that determine why parents engage in certain behaviors.…”

“…More importantly, some parents reported being unable to 1 develop sufficient resources to deal with the stressors they experienced, particularly during the 2 specializing (12-16 years) and investment stages (16+ years) where these stressors were most 3 prevalent (Harwood & Knight, 2009b). However, it was beyond the scope of these studies to identify 4 the education and support parents specifically wanted or needed to prevent, cope with or manage 5 these complex and challenging demands.…”

“…Consequently, the extent to which these findings represent the 18 education and support needs of parents operating in other cultures, contexts and organizational 19 systems (e.g., British tennis) remains unclear. Furthermore, these studies are limited in that they did 20 not explore how parents' education and support needs change or evolve across different 21 developmental stages. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to address these gaps in the literature 22 by developing a grounded theory of British tennis parents' education and support needs across 23 contexts and developmental stages.…”

“…Following institutional ethical approval, purposeful sampling was used to select two high 21 performance tennis centers (one with international status) in Great Britain that were geographically 22 suitable and would provide access to the range of parents (i.e., parents of players across all levels and 23 ages) needed to address the research questions. Following an initial visit, directors at both centers 24 agreed to allow the first author access to all areas of their centers.…”