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Abstract
Parents of youngsters in sports clubs can participate at different levels going from thinking to acting (rendering services) and deciding (shared management). This research tries to give an answer to four questions :
a) How many parents fulfil a task in their child’s sports club ?
b) Is there a discrepancy between the number of fathers and mothers who are engaged in the club?
c) What are the most common tasks exerted by parents and
d) How do parents and youngsters experience the engagement of the parents?
In a first part a representative sample of 1829 youngsters (12 to 16 years old) active in organised swimming, gymnastics, volleyball, tennis and karate and 296 parents of young swimmers filled out a questionnaire. The second part of the study was a qualitative research where 43 parents of youngsters (participating in one of the five sports mentioned above) were interviewed.
Most of the parents do not engage in the sports club of their child(ren), 15,4% of the fathers and 9% of the mothers do have a function. The engagement is usually experienced as positive, as well by the youngsters, as by the parents themselves. Parents who do not participate actively are afraid of the workload and/or their lack of competence and those who have a function complain about the fact that the work is always for the same people. To attract parents for voluntary work, sports clubs can work out a plan in different steps.