Is Gender Appropriateness of Sport Also Haunting Children With Disabilities?

Background/Purpose: According to Eccles’s expectancy-value model and parents socialization model, parents’ expectation for boys and girls in sport participation may be different due to the effect of perceived gender appropriateness of sport.  This effect of perceived gender appropriateness, however, may vary for children with disability. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of children’s gender, disability types, and disability levels on parents’ motives for letting their children participating in physical activities and children’s physical activity levels.

Method: Participants were 184 parents (father=78, mother=106) who had children with disability (male=113, female=71). Disability types categorized as physical disability (n=42), deaf (n=35), visual impairment (n=7), and intellectual disability (n=95), and disability levels were divided into 3 degrees (mild=53, moderate=78, and severe=62). Parents’ motives consisted of 7 dimensions (personal fitness and skill improvement, social expectation and external factor, competition and challenge, social enhancement, positive emotion and friendship, and teamwork). And, finally, frequency and length of time were used to assess children’s physical activity levels.

Analysis/Results: One-way MANOVAs revealed a significant effect of disability type on parents’ motives (Wilks' λ= .84, F (18, 481.32) = 1.70, p < .05), while no effects of gender or disability level were found. Follow-up analysis showed that parents of children with physical disability (M=3.95) and deaf (M=4.02) emphasized more on developing teamwork skills as the reason of letting their children participate in physical activities than those of children with intellectual disability (M=3.70).

Conclusions: Although parents’ perceived gender appropriateness of sport has been found to have an effect parents’ expectation and children’s sport participation, this effect appears to be diminished in children with disability.