Fathering through Sport

Abstract

At a time when ‘fathers’, ‘fatherhood’ and ‘fathering’ are highly contested concepts in westernised societies, leisure is significant as a primary site for men to respond to the increased expectation that fathers will be actively involved with their children. Sport, with its lengthy tradition of paternal participation with children, is a particularly appropriate leisure form for deconstructing how the emergence of ideologies of ‘new’ fatherhood may be played out in leisure settings. On the one hand, sport offers a relatively familiar, secure and comfortable site in which men can use an established competence to engage with their children; on the other, participating in their children's sport may allow fathers to fulfil current expectations of involved fathering. Drawing on data from a qualitative study with fathers (n=8) of boys who were members of a youth football team, the paper explores the role that leisure plays as a site for fathering. It examines the context within which fathers seek to spend time with their children, the nature of their involvement in their children's sport, and the function that leisure plays within their performance of fatherhood. The study finds that fathers have a strong consciousness of ideologies of involved fathering and that these are strong influences on their involvement in their children's leisure. While embracing these ideologies, fathers nonetheless experience difficulty and tension in reconciling them with the continuing demands of ‘traditional’ fathering. The study concludes that these tensions raise a number of further questions for leisure studies scholars to address, and that by doing so they may contribute to the broader understanding of contemporary fatherhood.