Coping strategies for parents with kids in competitive hockey
Posted Sep 29, 2014 3:07 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Long hours and busy schedules: it can be tough when you have a child in competitive hockey.
A staggering 1.1 million parents in Canada are estimated to have kids registered in the sport.
One Ontario professor is studying how parents cope.
Deborah McPhee from Brock University’s Goodman School of Business did countless interviews with hockey moms and dads.
She found one of the biggest strains was travel.
“It takes its toll because, you have to be there an hour ahead, you have to plan for traffic, you know etc.,” she said. “So it causes a lot of stress on parents, juggling that time to be able to get their kids to hockey.”
Those she interviewed had to have great organization skills, especially with some families having upwards of four children in the sport.
“They had colour-coded charts, they had family meetings to discuss the week ahead and what was going to happen,” she said.
Most parents with kids in hockey are white collar, mostly because the costs of the sport can be $7000-10,000 a year.
They also need flexibility: a lot of two parent households have one parent that is either self-employed or does not have a full time job.
McPhee explains competitive hockey is such a big commitment you have to know what your child’s goal is, and whether it’s worth it in the end.
