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.