Abstract
Minor hockey is a touchstone within Canadian culture with parents’ support and dedication traditionally placed at the heart of the sport experience. However, parental sport involvement is not uncomplicated and recent attention has been paid to problematic or disruptive parental behaviour within the hockey context. Media framings play a salient role in shaping our understandings of specific groups and social roles and both reflect and contribute to current understanding of the ‘hockey parent’ in the Canadian imaginary. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine how “hockey parents” have been portrayed in Canadian print media. A Newsbank search for instances of hockey, parent, Mom or Dad in the headlines in major Canadian newspapers between 2013-2023, yielded 268 unique articles. Headlines were categorized by the research team (84% agreement) as either a positive, negative, or neutral portrayal of a hockey parent. While 41% of headlines were categorized as neutral (e.g., More driving for Mountain hockey parents?), 33% of headlines depicted parents in a positive light (e.g., Hockey parents shouldn't be taken for granted), with 26% highlighting something negative about the parents (e.g., Bullying by hockey parents not Canadian way). Portrayals often overlapped with other social narratives (e.g., idealized motherhood/fatherhood) and drew upon a collective imaginary of what a hockey parent ‘ought’ or ‘ought not’ to be. We argue the figure of the hockey parent is imagined, constructed and represented in mainstream media in ways that leverage emotional and value-laden connections to idealized social roles.
