“Getting Moving” and Being “Active Fit”: Class Differences and Similarities in Health-promoting Parenting through Children's Organized Athletic Activities

Mahala Miller and Teresa Toguchi Swartz

Social Science & Medicine, 2024, vol. 347, issue C

Abstract: Parents are held increasingly responsible for acting intensively to protect their children's health through everyday decisions and practices. We add to this scholarship by considering how organized athletic activities, an important part of the lives of many children, help parents fulfill their responsibility to protect their children's health. Through qualitative analysis of 92 in-depth interviews with parents, we attend to how parents' class shapes their articulation of the relationship between their children's health and their extracurricular involvement, considering literature on the ubiquity of intensive parenting expectations and the possibility that health behaviors and understandings constitute health-related cultural capital. Contrary to previous research, overall, we find similarities across class in parents' understandings of the health benefits of organized athletic activities. We find that parents believe organized athletic activities protect their children's health from inactivity, excess technology usage, and fatness. We do find some class distinctions. Middle-class parents, and not working-class parents, believe that their children's athletic activities will instill a passion for exercise and staying in shape and give children the experience and knowledge to control their body size and promote their well-being through their lives. This may signal a transformation in the relationship between health-related parenting and class that could maintain middle-class children's advantage if it contributes to differences in health beliefs, narratives, or practices that are differentially rewarded by important institutions such as schools, the workplace, or the medical system.

Keywords: Parenting; Physical health; Organized athletic activities; Cultural sociology; Qualitative; Social disparities in health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795362400220X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:347:y:2024:i:c:s027795362400220x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116776

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().