Routledge Handbook of Youth Sport

Ken Green, Andy Smith, Ken Green, Andy Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134470006
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Physical Education

The Routledge Handbook of Youth Sport is a comprehensive survey of the latest research into young people's involvement in sport. Drawing on a wide diversity of disciplines, including sociology, psychology, policy studies, coaching, physical education and physiology, the book examines the importance of sport during a key transitional period of our lives, from the later teenage years into the early twenties, and therefore helps us develop a better understanding of the social construction of young people's lives.

The book covers youth sport in all its forms, from competitive game-contests and conventional sport to recreational activities, exercise and lifestyle sport, and at all levels, from elite competition to leisure time activities and school physical education. It explores youth sport across the world, in developing and developed countries, and touches on some of the most significant themes and issues in contemporary sport studies, including physical activity and health, lifelong participation, talent identification and development, and safeguarding and abuse.

No other book brings together in one place such a breadth and depth of material on youth sport or the engagement of young people in physical activity. The Routledge Handbook of Youth Sport is therefore important reading for all advanced students, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers with an interest in youth sport, youth culture, sport studies or physical education.

SECTION 1 Youth sport in context

DOI: 10.4324/9780203795002-2

1 Introduction

Ken Green

DOI: 10.4324/9780203795002-3

The four authors in Section 1 explore change and transformation in youths’ lives and the implications for the context in which the remaining topics in the Handbook need to be understood. In Chapter 2, Young people and social change, Ken Roberts outlines the ways in which the youth life-stage has been reshaped in all Western countries, with most other countries increasingly resembling the West. There have been several key developments in the overall reshaping of youth, which Roberts identifies as extension, destandardisation and individualisation. In keeping with the notion of youth as a life stage (see the General introduction), youth has been extended, but with huge variations in how long it now lasts, depending on individual circumstances. In addition, some of the transitions experienced during youth (for example, from living with parents to living alone, and from being in education to gaining paid employment) have been destandardised in the sense that there is no longer a single, normal sequence followed by the vast majority of youth. These developments have led to the increased individualisation of youth biographies. Although youth has been reshaped, what Roberts refers to as ‘the major landmarks’ in the transition from youth to adulthood remain: completing full-time education, obtaining an adult job, marriage and parenthood. Indeed, as Roberts observes, the wider changes in the life stage of youth appear to have no direct implications for sports careers. These tend to have their own structure and momentum. While sports careers have always been individualised, the wider changes in the youth life stage have altered the context in which youth sports careers develop (or do not develop). The upshot is that although youth sports careers can endure relatively independently of wider changes to the life stage of youth, such changes require us to rethink how sport is presented and delivered to young people. The rest of this Handbook teases out some of the issues in need of reflection and, perhaps, action.

In Chapter 3, Youth leisure as the context for youth sport, Roberts follows up his outline of Young people and social change by asking the question: ‘how does a wider leisure context add to our understanding of youth and sport?’ In short, his response is two-fold: first, we come to recognise that ‘most of the young people who do little if any sport, and those who take part less often as they grow older, are rarely becoming couch potatoes but rather, they are diverting their time, money and attention to other forms of leisure; second, we realise that youth is not the life stage when individuals are most likely to be drawn into sport and in which they remain for life’. Youth is the life stage when drop-out from sport peaks and the explanation, Roberts notes, lies in the greater appeal of other uses of leisure. Consequently, sport tends to be repositioned during youth as the age group divides into peer groups that align with different youth sub-cultures. As a useful lead into Jiri Zuzanek’s chapter on time use among youth, Roberts shows how, against several measures, sport is not a major use of leisure among youth – especially when compared with such things as TV viewing and computer usage. At the same time, however, he notes how quantitative yardsticks overlook sport’s cultural traction among adults and children as well as youth. Sport is rivalled for cultural pull, he adds, only by popular entertainment. However, sport has some major advantages: people think sport is a good thing – sport matters. Youth and sport appear a natural couplet, according to Roberts, not least because nearly all younger children have had sport built into their routines. Childhood is the life stage when there is mass recruitment into sport. So the vast majority of young people enter the post-child life stage with foundations in sport already laid. As explained elsewhere in the Handbook, these foundations are not all equally strong. Roberts goes on to introduce very many of the issues dealt with in the Handbook, including: the assumed relationship between sport and health, socialisation into sport, drop-off and drop-out from sport, the significance of parents and friends, levels of physical activity and participation, elite youth sport and the benefits of youth sport compared with other uses of leisure, to name but a few. In the process, he teases out what distinguishes the minority of young people who continue to play sport regularly into young adulthood.

Historic gains in free time have gone disproportionately to the young and the elderly. Childhood has grown as a result of children being required to remain longer in compulsory education and the life stage of youth has been prolonged by, among other things, more youngsters remaining in education until their early twenties. Simultaneously, the elderly have (until recently, at least) been retiring earlier and living longer. In Youths’ use of time from comparative, historical and developmental perspectives, Jiri Zuzanek considers the impact of lifestyle changes that have accompanied technological advancements in the form of automobiles, TV, mobile phones and the internet, and their seeming impact upon physical activity and sedentary lifestyles. Like Roberts before him and Haycock and Smith subsequently, Zuzanek highlights the fact that sports involvement typically diminishes with age, beyond the early teenage years. A range of health-related issues have contributed to an intensification of research into youths’ time use and, in particular, the place of sport and other active uses of leisure time. Thus, drawing upon time use surveys over a period of several decades, Zuzanek examines the place of sport and physically active leisure in the lives of youth and, more specifically, how much of it is allocated to physically active leisure and sports. He reveals how the decline in sports participation characteristic of the teenage years and beyond tends to be relatively modest in some countries while pretty steep in others. Among the many policy implications of youths’ time use, Zuzanek picks out several that he considers ‘particularly serious’, including what he refers to as the dangers of sedentary lifestyles resulting, in part, from the growth of mass and electronic media and youths’ ‘excessive media exposure’. Zuzanek argues that greater attention needs to be paid not only to physically active leisure but to adolescents’ overall patterns of (and balances between) daily life – especially sleep, eating habits, mass media consumption, extra-curricular activities and relationships with parents and peers. In this regard, Zuzanek argues that a balanced use of time rather than an exponential growth of selective activities is at the root of higher quality of youths’ lives and their physical, emotional and intellectual well-being; hence, what Zuzanek perceives as the need to avoid focusing solely on expanding youths’ participation in one particular group of activities, such as sport.

In Youth, sport and leisure careers, David Haycock and Andy Smith bring the section to a close by developing Roberts’ observation that until their mid-twenties, the largest concentration of young people is in education, and higher education, like primary and secondary education, is an obvious location for youth sport. Drawing upon research conducted with university students, Haycock and Smith examine some of the benefits, as well as the difficulties, of injecting a longitudinal dimension into the study of young people’s lives using panel research designs, and how these can be particularly beneficial for understanding the interrelationships between sport and leisure careers. Central to the explanation of youth sport and leisure careers, they argue, is the differential contribution made by the construction of young people’s habituses and capitals, which help provide the foundations upon which participation and tastes for sport in later life are based. Following Roberts and others in this book, Haycock and Smith show that it is childhood, rather than youth, which is the most critical life stage in which the predispositions for subsequent sport participation are frequently laid. Accordingly, since the observed differences in sport participation first emerged during childhood, widened between the ages of twelve to thirteen, and remained relatively set from age sixteen onwards, the subsequent inequalities in sport participation among university students could not be attributed to a higher education effect, as previous research has suggested.

Taken together, the contributions to Section 1 can help us understand just why the growth of participation in post-compulsory education, in countries such as the UK, has not been followed by an increase in adult sports participation of the kind anticipated – given that young people staying on in education are likely to have their sporting predispositions reinforced and enhanced by the availability of opportunities, like-minded friends and peers, the availability of subsidised, close-to-hand facilities and so forth (Roberts, 2010). It seems that the expected effects of prolonged involvement in education on youth sport participation may only operate amid other favourable factors of the kind explored elsewhere in this Handbook.

Reference

• Roberts, K. (2010). Personal communication. Wednesday, 1 December 2010.

2 Young People And Social Change

Ken Roberts

DOI: 10.4324/9780203795002-4

Introduction

This chapter reviews how the youth life stage has changed during the current era, which is variously described as post-industrial, post-modern, globalised, neo-liberal, an information age and post-welfare. The preceding industrial age is inevitably the benchmark against which subsequent changes are assessed. Hence the importance of stressing the brevity of the industrial era, which was when most modern sports were invented.

The chapter begins with a brief sketch of pre-modern youth, then proceeds to how youth was reconstructed, and became more structured, universal and less gendered during the industrial age. The main subsequent changes in the life stage – extension, destandardisation and individualisation – are then described. The concluding section explains that youth sport careers have their own structure and momentum that are unaffected by wider changes. Even so, these wider changes make the case for a rethink on how sport is presented and delivered to young people.

Pre-modern youth

It is impossible to generalise except to state that youth has not been a universal life stage. In some societies, in some social groups, children started to work in their homes and in the fields as soon as they were able to do so. Children were treated as mini adults and were expected to grow up quickly (Aries, 1973). Marriage could be at any age from puberty onwards. Pre-pubertal children could be betrothed (contracted to marry), and were sometimes actually married, though invariably with an assumption that these relationships would not be consummated before puberty.

When it was a distinguishable life stage, youth was often a mark of privilege for those who could be allowed to delay adulthood while they completed their education, trained for a profession or practised the arts of warfare. Sometimes the delay was enforced, usually when inheritance of a title or property was involved.

In pre-modern times, youth was always gendered. Often all the youths were males. Full adulthood for high status young men could be delayed until an aristocratic title was inherited and family property passed down to the rising generation. For such males, major landmarks in the transition through youth could be completion of formal education or an apprenticeship, or participation in a military campaign, but always marriage, which made it possible for men to father legitimate children. It was usually possible for the sisters of these young men to marry at any age after puberty whereupon they became adult women. Until they married or were betrothed, they were maidens, available for offers. However, practices changed in early modern Europe’s aristocratic families when it became normal to delay girls coming out until the late-teenage years. In England, these debutantes were formally presented at the court of the monarch. This practice ended in 1958, but London society still organises a season of balls and other events that are attended by eligible daughters and possible suitors. Whereas a male could become accepted as an adult without marrying, this was usually impossible for a daughter unless she inherited family property (in the absence of a male heir). Once passed child-bearing age, single women became spinsters and could not expect this status to change.

Youth in the industrial age

When countries became industrial and urban, youth was always reconstructed. In this process youth always became a more firmly structured, and thereby a more distinct, life stage. Also, youth always became universal within the countries, meaning that it became a distinct life stage for all social groups, and it became less gendered than in the past.

The reconstruction was due mainly to the multiplication of laws specifying age-related rights, responsibilities and prohibitions (Wallace and Kovacheva, 1998). There were laws specifying the ages between which children and young people had to attend school, and the ages from which they could undertake paid employment, sometimes, at first, with restrictions on the hours that they could work and the kinds of work that they could do. There were laws stipulating the ages from which young people could purchase alcohol and tobacco, watch adult entertainment and engage in consensual sexual activity. Then there were the ages at which young people became eligible to vote and hold public office, which became relevant for all young people when the franchise was extended to all adults, male and female. There were also ages at which young people became eligible for full adult welfare entitlements – sickness and unemployment benefits, and housing assistance for example. There was never a single age at which all the new rights and responsibilities took effect. Thus, youth became the life stage during which new adult rights and responsibilities were gradually bestowed. That said, completing full-time education, obtaining an adult job, marriage and parenthood remained the really major landmarks. Once passed these, you were an adult. Youth became a life stage for males and females, and in this sense was less gendered than in the past. However, it remained normal for males and females to be educated differently and to be employed in gendered occupations, and for girls, marriage and parenthood were somewhat more significant landmarks than for men, though for the latter it usually meant becoming the main breadwinner while the woman’s main role was henceforth domestic.

As youth became a distinct life stage, special youth services were introduced. There were youth courts and sentences deemed appropriate for young offenders who were usually kept out of adult prisons. Special services and new professions were created to provide young people with education and career advice, and assistance in finding suitable jobs. Apprenticeships were joined by additional juvenile jobs thus creating an intermediate stage for everyone between being a child and an adult employee. Additional youth services offered legal, health and housing advice. Special housing was allocated for young people, especially full-time students who needed to move away from their parents’ homes. Civil society organisations – churches, trade unions and political parties – created youth sections. The same applied in sports clubs and associations. Dedicated youth agencies were created – scouts, guides, and youth clubs with various sponsors. As countries became more prosperous, various commercial goods and services were targeted as a distinct youth market – fashion, music, films, holidays, motor bikes and scooters.

This is how a ‘classical’ youth life stage was constructed. It is inevitably the benchmark against which more recent changes are assessed. So it is useful to bear in mind that the classical youth life stage lasted for less than a century in most countries, and in much of the world, especially in the global south, the countries and their young people are currently skipping the industrial stage. Youth move from traditional lives in traditional villages into cities where a post-modern type of youthhood awaits them.

Ideas that survive into the present about the age group that can be described as youth were formed in the industrial period. The precise ages before and after which it is inappropriate to desc...