Political programming of sport has become the new orthodoxy in many countries where the strive for a more healthy and civically engaged population is intertwined with an ambition to encourage and make responsible individuals and organisations for meeting societal goals. Although much effort has been put into studying this phenomenon, there

The purpose of this paper is to use the theoretical standpoint of sociology of childhood to enhance understanding about how children's rights, as outlined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, are experienced by child athletes and adult coaches in the context of sport clubs in Sweden. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with children and coaches in floorball and equestrian sports during the years 2011 and 2012. The results showed that neither child athletes nor adult coaches were aware that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has been incorporated into Swedish sport policy; they also lack knowledge of the convention's content. After interviews about selected rights were conducted, it was evident that children and adults both considered the themes of those rights to be of utmost importance. However, they did not find the convention meaningful as a policy document, and no systematic, deliberate or preventive work with regard to the rights of the child was experienced in the sport clubs. This paper discusses some challenges in the children's sport context, including children's rights, the social ordering of children and adults and the goal of making children's sport a safe activity for children.

To cite this article: Inger Eliasson (2019) Child-rearing in public spaces: the challenging dualrole relationships of parent-coaches and child-athletes of coaches in Swedish team sports, Sport,

The reasons young athletes drop out of sport have eluded scientists and sport organizations for many decades. Despite a large body of research on the subject, unanswered questions remain. This article reports on a new research approach that analyses sport withdrawal as a process. The study draws on Ebaugh’s sociological theory of disengagement and is based on data from semi-structured interviews with 12 girls aged 12 to 17 and 12 of their parents. By studying withdrawal from sport as a process, we found that the reasons comprise a combination of several salient interplaying factors related to changes. Organizational changes in sport and changes in the young athletes’ overall lives, together with changes in normative cultural and individual expectations associated with the young athlete role, are decisive for these girls to withdraw from sport. Furthermore, the disengagement process may be fairly long and emotional for young athletes, and less reversible the further into the process they progress.

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