The influence of parenting practices and parental presence on children's and adolescents' pre-competitive anxiety

Julien Bois (1) , Julien Lalanne (1) , Catherine Delforge (1)

1 MEPS - Mouvement, Équilibre, Performance, Santé

We examined parental influence on athletes' pre-competitive anxiety. The effect of parental presence during competition was studied as was the role of parenting practices. Data were collected from a sample of 341 athletes (201 basketball players and 140 tennis players) before an official competition. Analysis of variance indicated that the presence of both parents was associated with higher levels of pre-competitive anxiety for all participants, except male tennis players. The absence of both parents did not result in lower levels of anxiety. A second set of variance analysis revealed that girl tennis players at provincial and national level perceived higher levels of parental pressure than most other participants. Canonical correlation analysis showed a positive relationship between pre-competitive anxiety and parenting practices for tennis players, but not for basketball players. Directive behaviours and pressure were positively associated with pre-competitive anxiety for all tennis players, whereas praise and understanding was negatively related to anxiety for female tennis players only.

Mots clés: parenting practice; parental pressure; tennis; basket; stress

Domaines: Psychologie

Julien Bois, Julien Lalanne, Catherine Delforge. The influence of parenting practices and parental presence on children's and adolescents' pre-competitive anxiety. 2009. ⟨hal-00390981⟩