Full Description
Is sport good for kids? When answering this question, both critics and advocates of youth sports tend to fixate on matters of health, whether condemning contact sports for their concussion risk or prescribing athletics as a cure for the childhood obesity epidemic. Child's Play presents a more nuanced examination of the issue, considering not only the physical impacts of youth athletics, but its psychological and social ramifications as well. The eleven original scholarly essays in this collection provide a probing look into how sports—in community athletic leagues, in schools, and even on television—play a major role in how young people view themselves, shape their identities, and imagine their place in society. Rather than focusing exclusively on self-proclaimed jocks, the book considers how the culture of sports affects a wide variety of children and young people, including those who opt out of athletics. Not only does Child's Play examine disparities across lines of race, class, and gender, it also offers detailed examinations of how various minority populations, from transgender youth to Muslim immigrant girls, have participated in youth sports. Taken together, these essays offer a wide range of approaches to understanding the sociology of youth sports, including data-driven analyses that examine national trends, as well as ethnographic research that gives a voice to individual kids. Child's Play thus presents a comprehensive and compelling analysis of how, for better and for worse, the culture of sports is integral to the development of young people—and with them, the future of our society.
Contents
Introduction: Kids and SportMichael A. Messner and Michela MustoPart I. Playing Fields: The Social Landscape of Youth SportsChapter 1. Surveying Youth Sports in America: What We Know and What It Means for Public PolicyChapter 2. Kids of Color in the American Sporting Landscape: Limited, Concentrated, and ControlledChapter 3. Girls and the Racialization of Female Bodies in Sport ContextsChapter 4. Sport and the Childhood Obesity EpidemicChapter 5. The Children Are Our Future: The NFL, Corporate Social Responsibility, and the Production of "Avid Fans"Part II. Fields of Play: Kids Navigating Sport WorldsChapter 6. Athletes in the Pool, Girls and Boys on Deck: The Contextual Construction of Gender in Coed Youth SwimmingChapter 7. The Voices of Boys on Sport, Health, and Physical Activity: The Beginning of Life Through a Gendered LensChapter 8. "We Have a Right to the Gym": Physical Activity Experiences of East African Immigrant GirlsChapter 9. Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Kids and the Binary Obstacles of Sport Participation in North AmericaChapter 10. Examining Boys, Bodies, and PE Locker Room Spaces: "I Don't Ever Set Foot in That Locker Room"Chapter 11. Park "Rats" to Park "Daddies": Community Heads Creating Future MentorsAfterword: Kids, Sport Research, and Sport PolicyNotes on ContributorsIndex
