“If you’re losing, you shouldn’t be all depressed about it”: collegiate athletes’ perceptions of the role of the family on emotion socialisation in sport

Competitive sport is widely recognised as an emotionally charged environment, and recent research has emphasised that emotions in sport are inherently social, emerging and regulated within dynamic interpersonal contexts. However, little is known about the role of the family in shaping emotional competencies early in sport, particularly within youth sport settings. This study explored collegiate athletes’ perceptions of how their parents influenced their emotion socialisation in youth sport. Participants were 11 American collegiate athletes (Mage = 20.45, SD = 1.75; six women, five men). Using an interpretive description (ID) methodology, we conducted semi-structured interviews focused on athletes’ emotional experiences in sport. Findings were organised around the overarching concept of the family-sport emotional climate, which captured athletes’ perceptions of how their parents’ emotion-related behaviours and interactions contributed to their emotional learning. Themes included emotion coaching from parents (both supportive and corrective), modelling and observation of parents and siblings, and family expectations for participation and performance. Our findings highlight that what athletes learn about emotions from their parents emerges through a broad environment characterised by what parents say, how family members behave and what is implicitly expected or valued in sport. Parents do not simply respond to their children’s sport-related emotions in discrete moments, but help construct emotional meanings, norms and expectations that shape their emotion socialisation.