Towards an understanding of fathers’ involvement in children’s sporting activities as racial fathering practices

ABSTRACT

This research note puts forward a conceptual framework for leisure research seeking to bring sport, fathering, and race and ethnicity together. It draws on theoretical ideas of practices and racial projects to develop the notion of racial fathering practices. The potential of racial fathering practices as an analytic approach is indicated through three vignettes of fathers’ involvement in their children’s sporting activities drawn from in-depth interview studies of fathers’ understandings of bringing up their mixed-race children in Britain and Aotearoa New Zealand.

KEYWORDS:

• Father involvement
• practices
• racial fathering practices
• racial projects
• sport

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Māori performing arts.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and by The Leverhulme Trust.

Notes on contributors

Rosalind Edwards

Rosalind Edwards is Professor of Sociology at the University of Southampton, UK.  She is a co-director of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, an elected fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and a founding and co-editor of the International Journal of  Social Research Methodology.  Rosalind has published widely in the fields of family studies and research methods.