Abstract
Adolescent athletes' perceptions of low parental support are related to less adaptive forms of coping (Lafferty & Dorrell, 2006), however researchers have yet to investigate parental pressure and the socialization of athletes' coping. This study examined parental socialization of coping and the influence of perceived parental support and pressure on athletes' coping. Competitive soccer players (15 males, 10 females, M age = 13.8, SD = .5) completed the Coping Instrument for Competitive Sport (Gaudreau & Blondin, 2002) and the Parental Involvement in Activities Scale (Anderson et al., 2003), which measures parental support and pressure. Athletes' parents (12 fathers, 13 mothers, M age = 46.4, SD = 5.37) completed the Socialization of Coping questionnaire (Abaied & Rudolph, 2010). Perceived parental support was related to socialization of engagement coping (r = .57, p < .01) and negatively associated with athletes' disengagement coping (r = -.48, p < .05). Parental pressure was associated with disengagement coping (r = .61, p < .01) and socialization of disengagement coping (r = .45, p < .05). Socialization of disengagement coping was related to disengagement coping (r = .52, p < .01). Regression analyses revealed a main effect for parental pressure on athletes' use of disengagement coping (ß = .73, 95% CI 0.17-1.01, p < .05). Results suggest that athletes' perceptions of parental pressure are important in predicting athletes' use of disengagement coping in competitive sport.Acknowledgments: This study was supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded to the first author