A liquid modern perspective on avoiding sports careers in ultra-low-birth-rate societies: risk aversion and policy fluidity

This study examines why parents in South Korea’s ultra-low-fertility society avoid sports careers for their children through Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity. Moving beyond individual parental motivations, it explores the liquid-modern institutional conditions that make sports career avoidance appear to be a rational choice. Qualitative interviews were conducted with ten participants, including parents of student-athletes, teachers, coaches, and representatives of sports organizations and local sports institutions, and the data were analyzed using narrative analysis. The findings show that having fewer children intensifies economic and emotional investment in each child, leading parents to perceive sports careers as a high-risk pathway involving substantial costs, conflict with academic trajectories, injury and dropout risks, and limited opportunities for recovery after failure. Moreover, short-term performance-oriented policies, project-based funding, and fragmented institutional support undermine trust in sports career pathways and shift long-term risks onto families and coaches. This study therefore interprets sports career avoidance not simply as parental reluctance or a consequence of demographic decline, but as a liquid-modern phenomenon shaped by ultra-low fertility, familial risk calculation, and policy fluidity. It reframes difficulties in athlete recruitment as an institutional problem of failing to provide sustainable sports career pathways.