Understanding Parents' Experiences With Athlete Retirement

This chapter synthesises the available literature on three related but distinct topics: parents’ perceptions of their children’s transition out of competition, parents’ role in their children’s withdrawal from sport and parents’ own experiences with athletic retirement. The majority of the athletic retirement literature has examined the athlete’s own perspective. An important objective of the athletic retirement literature has been to examine the quality of the retirement transition. A prominent theme in the career termination research has been the impact of withdrawal on athletes’ self-identities in particular. Athletes likewise experience significant disruption to their social identities. Parents’ assessment of their children’s readiness for transition from competitive sport is noteworthy. Parents have remarked their children did not seem to be prepared for the process of retiring. The model begins with the causes of career termination where a distinction is made between voluntary and involuntary forms of athletic retirement.