Negative experiences of mothers of children involved in community sports

Abstract

Children’s community sports require assistance of parents, such as in overseeing practices and in transportation to and from game venues; this means that parents are deeply involved with the teams. Parents have both positive and negative experiences with respect to their children’s sports activities. As a qualitative survey, this study aimed to clarify the kind of negative experiences that mothers have regarding their children’s community sports activities and to explore the conditions necessary for building a better team environment. Eight mothers with children who belonged to the community sports team until “retirement” were interviewed. Through analysis using M-GTA, the six categories were extracted: Problems concerning children’s competitive activities, problems with coaches, difficulties in balancing their own lives and the children’s activities, problems concerning the interference from and expectations of fathers, problems related to roles and duties, and relationship problems between mothers. Based on these results, educational intervention for parents was shown to be necessary, and recommendations for the future sports environment are presented.