Parents’ discursive accounts of their children’s participation in rugby league

ABSTRACT

Critical discursive psychology (CDP) was employed to examine how parents’ accounts of their young children’s participation in rugby league in New Zealand negotiate parental identities and, in particular, attend to issues of accountability in that role. The study analysed semi-structured interview data from 21 parents to examine the ways in which personal narratives intersect with parenting discourses. CDP notions of discourse were used to examine how the discourses that shape social practices of parenting and sport are produced and reproduced in talk. Findings demonstrated that decisions around children are justified through the recruitment of sufficiently popular discourses, and that appropriate courses of action for parents are based on the ability to demonstrate that a child’s needs have been prioritised. The emphasis parents place on ‘proving’ competence in their role is indicative of the strength of risk and blame discourses operating in individualist, post-industrial societies common in the West.

KEYWORDS:

• Parenting
• discourses
• sport
• rugby league
• critical discursive psychology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Megan Apse

Megan Apse is a Master of Social Science student at Lincoln University. She graduated with first class honours in 2020 and works in a range of research roles in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Roslyn Kerr

Roslyn Kerr is an Associate Professor in sociology of sport and Dean of the Faculty of Environment, Society and Design at Lincoln University. She has published on a wide range of aspects of sport in New Zealand, particularly around the sport of gymnastics, and on qualitative methodologies.

Kevin Moore

Kevin Moore is an Associate Professor in psychology at Lincoln University. He has expertise in the social psychology of wellbeing, including being the author of the recently published and Wellbeing and Aspirational Culture. Kevin has published in a wide range of areas across all of leisure, tourism, recreation and theoretical psychology.