How Parental Involvement Plays Into Youth's Passion Development

Passion is “a strong inclination toward an activity that people like, that they find important, and in which they invest time and energy” (Vallerand, 2003, p.757) and can manifest in two ways. Harmonious passion is “an autonomous internalization that leads individuals to choose to engage in the activity” (p. 756), whereas obsessive passion is “a controlled internalization of an activity in one’s identity that creates an internal pressure to engage in the activity” (p.756).

In youth sport, passion is influenced by the youth’s parental involvement. That involvement manifests as either parental support or pressure. Depending on the type of involvement youth perceive, the type of passion developed by participants can vary. To assess the relationship between passion development and parental support and pressure, 94 participants (8-14yr) completed surveys assessing their sport passion levels and perceived parental behaviors. Multivariate multiple regression analysis showed high parental pressure and low parental support predicted high levels of obsessive passion and low harmonious passion. Dependent t-tests indicated that regardless of gender, youth perceived pressure and support from both mothers and fathers similarly; however, boys perceived higher levels of pressure from fathers than girls did.