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

Abstract

In Aotearoa New Zealand, sport is highly valued as a means by which children can access health and wellbeing benefits, and parents have a range of options when considering sport and physical activities for children. This thesis uses the voices of parents whose young children participate in rugby league to explore their views on the sport, and their accounts of how it benefits children. The aim of the research was, through discursive psychological analysis of accounts, to investigate the role of any societal discourses co-opted into those accounts, and the ways in which these featured in parents’ discussion of their children and rugby league. Discursive devices used within parents’ accounts were identified and analysed using the discursive action model (DAM) as a guide. This called attention to the precise ways in which words are used to actively construct versions of events as plausible and factual. Discursive psychology influences the methodological and analytic framework, which, alongside the DAM and reference to Foucauldian notions of discourse, provides focus at both a micro and at a macro level. Twenty-one parents of rugby league players/ex-players aged five to ten years were interviewed using conversational style semi-structured interviews. The interview data revealed that decisions around children’s rugby league were justified with the recruitment of several prominent societal discourses, including those around the benefits of physical activity, responsible parenting discourses and masculinity discourses. The ways in which parents talked about their young children’s participation in rugby league revealed several aspects as significant. Specifically, that there is awareness that certain practices are considered good for children, that parenting is subject to both conflicting best practice advice and social judgement, and, that dilemmas arise when attempting to reconcile parenting preferences that differ from prevailing social norms.