Defining and characterizing parental resilience in youth sport.

Sport parenting research has established that parents encounter sport-specific stressors, which, if not managed appropriately, can affect their well-being, as well as having adverse effects on how they support their children. Resilience in sport literature has illustrated how athletes, teams, and organizations draw upon protective factors to buffer themselves from the negative effect of stressors. However, to date, little consideration has been given to resilience in parents. To this end, the purpose of this study was to define and characterize parental resilience in youth sport. Through a qualitative research design, 59 parents from 57 households, with children in several sports, participated in either one-to-one interviews (n = 25) or focus groups (n = 34). Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019). Parental resilience within youth sport was defined as “a dynamic process in which parents draw upon multiple psychosocial assets and strategies to effectively manage their responsibilities and maintain their psychological well-being, when encountering a range of stressors.” The four psychosocial assets that characterized parental resilience were maintaining perspective in sport, the ability to perceive and utilize social support, adaptability to different circumstances in sport, and maintaining optimism in sport. This study extends sport psychology research by introducing the concept of parental resilience in youth sport, highlighting key indicators and outcomes of parental resilience, and identifying psychosocial assets that facilitate a parent’s ability to manage the stressors they encounter. With this framework, future research could look to understand the psychosocial assets that are most applied for specific stressors and how parents developed these psychosocial assets over their sport parenting journey.