Speakers
Description
Despite the known health benefits of sport, parenthood can negatively affect sport participation. Recent studies showed that becoming a parent is related to decreased physical activity. Changes in sport behavior of young parents has been explained by gender or with the rational resource perspective of limited time and energy. We go beyond these current explanation by examining sport socialization during the formative years. Consequently, the research question reads: can change in sport behavior after becoming a parent be explained by gender, limited resources and socialization with sports?
This question will be answered with unique representative Dutch survey data of young parents (n=687), containing detailed information about sport socialization and sport careers, in addition to working hours, babysitter availability and physical discomfort after childbirth.
Logistic regression analyses confirmed that women and people without a babysitter stop sport participation more often after becoming a parent. In addition, the chances to drop out of sport decreases considerably when people sported around age 15, and when they see parents sport around age 11. Interestingly, sport participation around age 11 does not affect the chance to drop out of sport after becoming a parent.
Our results show that, besides the more often examined mechanism of gender and rational resource perspective, sport socialization seems to have an enormous impact on sport behavior when people become a parent. Including sport socialization seems necessary to better understand and prevent sport dropout during major life transitions, like becoming a parent. Setting an example as parent should not be underestimated.
