Why Do New Parents Stop Practising Sport? A Retrospective Study towards the Determinants of Dropping Out after Becoming a Parent

Abstract

Despite the known health benefits of sport, recent studies showed that parenthood is related to decreased sport participation. Changes in sport behaviour after becoming a parent have been explained by gender or with the rational resource perspective of limited time and energy. However, the latter is mostly theoretical, since empirical insights on resource mechanisms are scarce. We want to improve and go beyond these explanations by investigating them empirically and by examining sport socialisation during the formative years as an alternative explanation. Consequently, our main objective is to explain changes in sport participation after becoming a parent with gender, limited resources and socialisation with sport. To this end, we employ representative Dutch survey data of new parents (n = 594), containing detailed information on sport careers and sport socialisation, as well as babysitter availability, partner support and physical discomfort after childbirth. The results of the logistic regression analyses show that, besides gender and resource mechanisms, sport socialisation and social support seem to have a great impact on sport behaviour when people become parents. That is, men are more likely to continue sport participation, as well as people with more resources (physical, temporal and social) and more socialisation with sport during the formative years. So including sport socialisation and social support seems necessary to better explain and prevent sport dropout during major life transitions, like becoming a parent.