Parental pressure on young athletes: How should we feel about Kyle Walker's 'tough love' story?
20/09/2024
By Ed Mace
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​In light of the recent conversation around Kyle Walker’s upbringing and the influence that his dad, Michael, had on his career, Ed Mace discusses the impact of parental pressure in youth sport.
Кирилл Венедиктов, CC BY-SA 3.0 GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons
In a recent episode of his You’ll never beat Kyle Walker podcast, which BBC Sport later published a report on, the Manchester City full-back opened up about the start of his footballing career. The 34-year-old tells a fascinating story of the role his father played in his development. He paints Michael Walker as an intensely critical and unsatisfied figure, seemingly regardless of his child’s performance. Kyle Walker came across as exceptionally grateful in hindsight for the attitude that his dad had towards his football, stating it “made me be the person and player that I am”.
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There’s so much of this story that I find compelling, and I should preface that regardless of how critical I am of this approach on the whole, this piece is not intended as a criticism of the Walkers specifically. Kyle has had an illustrious career and his positivity towards his parents’ attitude shows that they have got it right with him. However, it’s my contention that not only should parents unequivocally steer clear of the attitude demonstrated by Michael Walker, but also that the BBC should be conscious of bringing too much attention to a story which could influence parental attitudes and methods towards young athletes, despite the behaviour being reported meeting some criteria for parental abuse.
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When observing the effects of parental pressure on athletic performance, Dr Daniel O’Rourke - a Washington-based psychologist - doesn’t simply look at the singular variable of pressure, but also the climate that this pressure takes place in. He makes a clear distinction between an ‘ego climate’, in which success is defined as being superior to others, and a ‘mastery climate’ where the focus purely revolves around improvement. O’Rourke’s results were dependent on this to some degree, with high-pressure ego climate environments being significantly more detrimental than a high-pressure mastery climate environment. However, it is still the case that high-pressure on the whole leads to more performance anxiety according to O’Rourke. This was to be expected, and the counter-argument would probably go something along the lines of: “yes it’s more anxiety inducing, but in order for a child to reach a professional or very high level, they need to be pushed far more by a parental figure.”
"A damage in parent-child relationships as well as damage to athletes’ well-being in cases of high-pressure environments at home"
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Larry Lauer, Director of Mental Performance at US Tennis Association Player Development, has a lot of pushback for this argument. Although his sample size was small, the majority of professional tennis players he conducted his survey on did not have stories akin to Kyle Walker’s. This is despite the nature of an individual sport lending itself to more parental involvement than a sport like football. In some cases where parental pressure was substantial, the tennis players in Lauer’s study would ask for the parents to not attend matches due to the nerves it would cause. Lauer does also emphasise the positive influence parents could have, typically when their approach revolved around emotional support rather than technical advice. The main conclusion in his piece is that a positively involved parent is a far more optimal method for raising an elite athlete, rather than one who feels the need to coach the child themselves or simply be overly-critical. He discusses a damage in parent-child relationships as well as damage to athletes’ well-being in cases of high-pressure environments at home.
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To me, Lauer’s most important quote is this: “an overly-involved parent is doing too much for the child, and the sport becomes more the goal of the parent than the child.” This leads to a broader conversation outside of the upper echelons of young athletes, which is more clear cut in my opinion. It is no secret that there are a lot of parents who live out their (usually failed) sporting fantasies vicariously through their children. The very nature of a “Project Mbappe” or whichever young superstar is most topical feels harmless, and typically is, but as an attitude towards youth sport it completely misses the mark of what it should be all about for most children.
"There is a crisis amongst grassroots football where the supposedly responsible adults do not meet the standards they should be meeting"
Larry Lauer, Director of Mental Performance at US Tennis Association Player Development, has a lot of pushback for this argument. Although his sample size was small, the majority of professional tennis players he conducted his survey on did not have stories akin to Kyle Walker’s. This is despite the nature of an individual sport lending itself to more parental involvement than a sport like football. In some cases where parental pressure was substantial, the tennis players in Lauer’s study would ask for the parents to not attend matches due to the nerves it would cause. Lauer does also emphasise the positive influence parents could have, typically when their approach revolved around emotional support rather than technical advice. The main conclusion in his piece is that a positively involved parent is a far more optimal method for raising an elite athlete, rather than one who feels the need to coach the child themselves or simply be overly-critical. He discusses a damage in parent-child relationships as well as damage to athletes’ well-being in cases of high-pressure environments at home. ​To me, Lauer’s most important quote is this: “an overly-involved parent is doing too much for the child, and the sport becomes more the goal of the parent than the child.” This leads to a broader conversation outside of the upper echelons of young athletes, which is more clear cut in my opinion. It is no secret that there are a lot of parents who live out their (usually failed) sporting fantasies vicariously through their children. The very nature of a “Project Mbappe” or whichever young superstar is most topical feels harmless, and typically is, but as an attitude towards youth sport it completely misses the mark of what it should be all about for most children.