Locating Sport in Family Practices

Abstract

Becoming a parent is, by and large, a wonderful experience. It is also a hugely challenging experience. My wife and I have two fabulous sons, aged 3 and 6 respectively and we love them to pieces. But there are times when we crave to be apart from them. This is certainly not the same as wishing they were not in our lives; this could not be any further from the truth. Sometimes we just need some alone time; time to recharge, time to reconnect with ourselves and one another and, dare I say it, time to catch up on the things we did before we had children. These ‘things’ I refer to are more often than not highly mundane, like taking the dogs for a long walk (without having to stop off at the playground en route, or without having to carry scooters up ‘that’ hill), washing the cars (without the ‘assistance’ of little helpers), or even having a soak in the bath (without the inevitable banging on the door). And a lie in at the weekend, well forget about it. Personally, what I crave the most is time to devote to playing and, to a lesser extent, watching sport. My wife and I have been together since the age of 15 and for the next 17 years I played sport pretty much guilt free. Like many of the participants in this book, sport is an incredibly important part of my life. I have been a student of the sociology of sport since I was 18 years old. My PhD took sport as its starting point and I have chosen a career educating young people about sport and its social significance. But two young children later and I struggle to carve out even a modest amount of time to follow the world of sport, never mind actively participate in it.