Ethnography interviewing Parents who encourage their children to play aggressive sports - Research Paper Example

Several parents are in favor of having their children play aggressive sports. One mother that was interviewed gave her side of the story. According to parent Sandra Hemingway (personal communication, August 8, 2011), she allows her 12-year-old daughter to participate in kickboxing because she believes it not only allows her to “learn valuable self-defense techniques,” but also because she thinks it is wonderful exercise for a young, growing girl. Another parent felt that having his child play an aggressive sport was a rite of passage, and part of his cultural heritage.

According to parent Mark Garcia (personal communication, August 8, 2011), he allows his 14-year-old son to participate in soccer because it is a team-oriented sport which has cultural ties to his native homeland of Mexico. It seems that parents are definitely models for how aggressively participants of certain sports can act. According to Dunlap (2005), “Parents, coaches, teammates, and sport heroes often model support for aggressive styles of play…Ideally, childrens participation in sports should be fun, contribute to physical development, teach skills, [and] help develop social skills…” (pp. 38). Social skills are important for younger children.

Research seems to suggest that, the more aggressive a contact sport is, the weaker the moral fibers of the child participating in the sport. This also suggests that the parents of these children are also going to have scored lower on moral reasoning tests. According to Hughes (2009), “People who have the greatest interest in highly aggressive contact sports or have participated in them for the longest amounts of time tend to score lower on tests of moral reasoning…” (pp. 49). Parents have actually been proven to be more prone to ‘sports rage,’ especially because of their children being involved in aggressive sports events.

According to “New Law Upgrades ‘Sports Rage’ Penalty” (2002), “[L]awmakers cited