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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2025 Aug 25.
Published in final edited form as: Sociol Sport J. 2021 Dec 16;39(4):401–411. doi: 10.1123/ssj.2021-0062

Paternal Closeness in Adolescence: The Association of Sports and Gender

Tom R Leppard 1, Mikaela J Dufur 2
PMCID: PMC12376824  NIHMSID: NIHMS2105803  PMID: 40855876

Abstract

Recent research suggests positive associations between shared recreational activities and father–child relationships for young children. We extend these ideas to adolescents and to recreational activities in which the father’s participation might be limited to audience membership. We use the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to evaluate whether an association exists between adolescent sports participation and paternal relationships, focusing on the adolescent’s perspective, and whether these associations differ for boys and girls. Findings show positive associations between sports participation and closer relationships between fathers and adolescents. Sports participation was more important for boys’ relationships with fathers than girls’. We discuss our findings in terms of contemporary shifts in gendered norms and conclude that gender may remain salient in how sport participation can promote father–child relationships.

Recent research published in Sociology of Sport Journal highlights new findings on the benefits of family recreational activities, namely strengthening father engagement (Knoester & Randolph, 2019). The authors speculated that recreational activities might increase paternal closeness both because they facilitate increased interactions between fathers and children and due to the positive influence of leisure on family and health. Although not the focus of their research, these authors noted that organized sports participation might have a positive influence on father–child interactions as well. We address this claim by examining whether adolescents’ formalized sports participation is associated with their perceptions of greater paternal closeness, both in terms of adolescent perceptions of closeness and in terms of activities together, and asking whether there are gendered differences in whose paternal relations are affected by sport participation. Although obviously not all men are interested in competitive sports, long-documented patterns of associations between sports and markers of masculinity (cf. Lewko & Ewing, 1980; Messner & Bozada-Deas, 2009) suggest that adolescent sports participation may improve father–child closeness because sports appeal to traditional masculine values that fathers may embrace (Lewko & Ewing, 1980). As a result, paternal relations may benefit from the shared symbolic power and interactions that sport facilitates (Cottingham, 2012). Conversely, adolescent formal sport participation may have little or no association with father–child relationships because its structure does not facilitate the same kind of immediate interactions between fathers and children that shared recreational activities do (Knoester & Randolph, 2019).

We extend this previous research in five ways. First, we look for an association between sport participation and parent–child relationship during adolescence, a time when many youths are beginning to pull away from families and establish independent identities (Greco & Eifert, 2004). In addition, as adolescent sport participation has been linked to desirable outcomes, such as academic performance (Feldman & Matjasko, 2005), health (Moore & Werch, 2005), and ties to peers (Fredricks & Eccles, 2005) and schools (Burrows & McCormack, 2011), if we find patterns similar to Knoester and Randolph’s concerning paternal closeness, we will add to the evidence that the benefits of sports participation extend to other desirable outcomes and calling for expanded sporting opportunities for youth to realize those benefits. Second, given the important associations between strong paternal relationships and desirable youth outcomes, we extend previous research by examining adolescent perceptions of their relationships with their fathers. If beliefs about how sport might improve paternal relationships are unidirectional only from the parent side, it is unlikely that such participation would translate into improving other adolescent outcomes. Third, we ask whether these associations exist for formalized adolescent sports participation rather than only for joint participation between father and child. Fourth, we highlight gender as a factor in how sport participation might be related to paternal closeness (Nikiforidis et al., 2018) at a time, such as adolescence, when gender boundaries around sports emerge and solidify (Slater & Tiggemann, 2010) and gender identity is fragile (Barker, 2009). We note that Knoester and Randolph (2019) controlled for potential gender differences; however, we tease out sports participation by adolescent gender. Finally, although Knoester and Randolph (2019) did well to document patterns in disadvantaged families, we use nationally representative quantitative data drawn from randomly selected schools across the United States, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, to examine further patterns of generalizability.

Importance of Father–Child Relationships in Adolescence

Family studies scholarship shows that strong relationships with parents are associated with a number of desirable adolescent outcomes, from academic success (Day & Doetterer, 2018; Dufur et al., 2013) and better physical and emotional health (Dufur et al., 2019; Wankoo et al., 2020) to decreased involvement in delinquent behavior (Dufur et al., 2015; Walters, 2019). Research that moved beyond questions of general parenting to mothering and fathering extends these positive associations to the relationships adolescents have specifically with fathers and father figures (Lamb & Sagi, 2014; Pace & Shafer, 2015), demonstrating the importance of considering the father–child relationship. Based on these studies, fostering and improving paternal relationships may be a fruitful pathway through which to encourage desirable outcomes.

Adolescence is also a time when youth often start to disengage from parents. Many adolescents undergo a typical developmental path wherein they begin to pull away from parents and express independence and individuality (Greco & Eifert, 2004; Hadiwijaya et al., 2017). Although this is desirable growth, it can also weaken the relationships with parents that help facilitate desirable outcomes. This may be especially true for relationships with fathers; although men in Western contexts are spending more time in parenting activities than in the past, they still spend substantially less time with their children than do women (Sayer, 2018; Shafer et al., 2020). We know less about how to promote important paternal relationships, particularly through extrafamilial activities like recreation or sport, as children move into and through adolescence.

Sport as a Pathway for Promoting Father–Child Relationships

Sociology of sport scholars capture multiple ways in which sports exert positive effects on childhood and adolescent outcomes, including better health outcomes (Moore & Werch, 2005), higher educational achievement (Feldman & Matjasko, 2005), lower participation in adolescent deviance (Mahoney & Stattin, 2000), and a greater sense of community with schools and peers (Burrows & McCormack, 2011; Fredricks & Eccles, 2005). We argue that sports could also serve as a mechanism through which children build their relationships with their fathers, which could, in turn, help to explain the positive associations between sports and other outcomes. Many fathers are engaged in a number of ways with their children’s sport participation. First, fathers act as a support for their child’s sports participation (Mitchell et al., 2009; Wheeler, 2011). Second, fathers get involved with their child’s sports by assuming various coaching, managerial, or other administrative capacities in their child’s team, especially for young children (Coakley, 2006; Messner & Bozada-Deas, 2009). Third, fathers express high expectations for their child’s performance in sports (Coakley, 2006; Gottzén & Kremer-Sadlik, 2012) and attempt to parent their children through sports (Kay, 2009). While it is likely some parents use their support of children’s sports as indicators of high-intensity parenting and, thus, markers of both quality parenting (Gottzén & Kremer-Sadlik, 2012; Messner & Bozada-Deas, 2009) and class status (Lareau, 2011; Scheibling & Marsiglio, 2021), some parents openly discuss their hopes that they can use sports to feel closer to their children (cf. Kremer-Sadlik & Kim, 2007; Lisinskienè & Lochbaum, 2018).

The majority of the literature documenting parental interactions with their child through sports, however, focuses on the parents’ perspective, including much of the work we use to build our arguments in this paper (Kremer-Sadlik & Kim, 2007; see Messner & Musto, 2014 for a critique of the lack of research on children and children’s perspectives in sport). Recent scholarship in this journal is among the early work examining quantitative data from the child’s perspective on how joint sporting activities influence the father–child relationship (Knoester & Randolph, 2019). This paper takes this literature a step further by examining how participation in formalized sports may benefit the relationship between children and their fathers even when fathers may no longer be able to be personally involved in the sport activity itself as children age into more competitive sporting settings.

Sports generate meaning between spectators and participants through rituals of emotion, symbols of fandom, and group interaction (Cottingham, 2012); some scholars compare these rituals and symbols to those found in religious practice and argue that practicing these sports rituals fills the same roles as religion for many people in modern societies (Forney, 2010). Joint practice of sport ritual or embracing of sports symbols through youth sport participation may mean that fathers’ direct involvement is not necessarily a prerequisite for father–child relationship building. Shared interactions and rituals in sport may tie fathers and their children together even when fathers are not directly involved in the sporting activity, with adolescent participation in sports facilitating emotional connection and interaction with fathers.

The emphasis on the shared symbolism in sport becomes more salient as children age into and through adolescence because there are fewer opportunities for formal paternal participation, such as coaching, due to sport participation becoming more specialized and institutionalized. In addition, the heavy time investments required for more formal sport participation in adolescence may further separate youth from their parents (Gracia et al., 2020). The current study, therefore, extends the conversation on the role of shared meaning and interaction in father–child relationship building through sport to large-scale quantitative data.

Gendered Differences in Adolescent–Father Relationships and Sports Participation

Although we propose the potentially unique symbolic power of sports to bond adolescents and fathers together, we acknowledge that this pathway may not operate in the same way for all youth. In particular, Knoester and Randolph (2019) found a gendered effect in the positive relations between father–child joint activities and paternal closeness consistent with the sex matching phenomenon (Nikiforidis et al., 2018). The sex matching phenomenon suggests that fathers engage more with their male children. Researchers have found similar patterns in paternal investments in education, finance, time, and in discussions on sexual health (cf. Hutchinson & Cederbaum, 2011; Nikiforidis et al., 2018).

There is evidence that paternal investments in youth sports activities are affected by youth gender in similar ways as the sex matching phenomenon operates elsewhere within the family (Nikiforidis et al., 2018). Boys are more likely than girls to play sports with their fathers (Mitchell et al., 2009). Paternal involvement in sons’ sporting lives is also associated with greater athletic success for boys (Tuck, 2015), and fathers tend to be more supportive of their sons’ sports participation than their daughters’ (Wheeler, 2011). Although such research is more limited, some work suggests that fathers can be worried whether their sons will participate in or excel in sports, or may become disappointed when their sons do poorly or do not share sporting interests (cf. Gottzén & Kremer-Sadlik, 2012; Hyman, 2009; Omli & LaVoi, 2011).

One possible explanation for these patterns is that fathers are more likely to have played the same sport as their sons and feel more comfortable playing with them or offering them coaching help. Fathers’ greater average support for and involvement in their sons’ sports activities, then, might indicate that playing sports would be more likely to facilitate closer relationships with fathers for boys than for their female peers.

Although girls’ participation in sports has grown and continues to grow, gaps between male and female adolescent sport participation still exist (Clark, 2008; Sabo, 2009) due to perceived gendered boundaries (Slater & Tiggemann, 2010) and a desire among some girls to maintain a feminine identity that they do not associate with athletic activities (Alvariñas-Villaverde et al., 2017). Sports participation, then, might have, at best, a less powerful impact on girls’ relationships with fathers as they navigate access to sports and, at worst, might have a negative impact on girls’ relationships with their fathers due to powerful gendered mechanisms that could cause a father to feel that it is inappropriate for girls to participate in sport. Conversely, sports may generate a closer relationship between fathers and their daughters than their sons because they represent a new opportunity for paternal investment. Interviews with female college athletes, for example, suggest that, for some, their participation in sports improved their relationships with their fathers (Prewitt-White et al., 2016; Willms, 2009).

Beyond the opportunities available to girls in sports, the symbolic meanings derived from sport are heavily gendered as well (Rasmussen et al., 2021). The hierarchies of management within sports remain predominantly male, and despite the increase of participation of girls in sports, gendered boundaries remain. For example, adults who participate in youth sport are often segregated into different roles by gender, providing different opportunities for interaction with youth athletes as well as qualitatively different experiences with those athletes (Messner & Bozada-Deas, 2009). Sports encourage predominantly masculine norms, and girls who participate do so against the grain of gendered expectations; some fathers may not be comfortable with their daughters’ involvement in sports rituals and symbols that they define as masculine (Cottingham, 2012), which might discourage relationship formation. Likewise, fathers engage in a similar compromise as they balance the gendered expectations of both fatherhood and sports. Fathers involved in their child’s sport must negotiate the caring norms of parenting alongside typically aggressive, masculine norms within sports (Kay, 2009; Scheibling & Marsiglio, 2021). We expect, then, that the sports pathway to facilitate stronger father–child relations might differ for boys and girls.

Hypotheses

  • H1—Adolescents who participate in formal sports activities will report closer relationships and more activities with fathers than will their peers who do not play sports.

  • H2—The relationship between sports participation and paternal relations will vary by gender of the adolescent with stronger positive effects for boys.

Data and Methods

Sample

We used data from Wave 1 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (AddHealth, n.d.). Although the AddHealth data have very useful characteristics for examining our questions, we acknowledge the age of the data. We note, however, that the AddHealth data remain an otherwise ideal source for quantitative investigation of these questions. First, the data provide a large, nationally representative sample from which we can generalize. Second, there are questions on both participation in sports (broken out by specific sports) and adolescent views on the paternal relationship (measures of closeness and mutual activities). More recent nationally representative data sets, such as the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 or the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, surprisingly lack questions on both specific sports participation and paternal relationships. The AddHealth data are widely used to examine questions about adolescent patterns and outcomes, which allows this work to be compared with a robust body of research. This remains true even as the data admittedly age; since 2018, more than 1,900 articles have been written using the AddHealth data set (AddHealth, n.d.). We note that some of these projects use later waves of data; however, many continue to use earlier waves due to the strengths of the data. We return later in the discussion to the question of how the age of the data should influence interpretation of our findings and what our findings might mean in an era of increasing female participation in sport. Although we look forward to more contemporary data that include these characteristics, AddHealth is appropriate to help adjudicate the ideas we present here. We used variables from the in-home and parent surveys from the publicly available data set (N = 6,504). To address missing data, we used Stata’s (version 15.0; StataCorp LLC, College Station, TX) multiple imputation chained protocol. We produced 20 imputed data sets; postimputation tests indicated appropriate distributions on both imputed and combined data sets. These strategies yielded a total analytic sample of 5,700 adolescents once we excluded respondents who did not have information about relationships with any father figure.

Dependent Variables

One of the strengths of the AddHealth data is that they contain variables concerning adolescents’ views on their relationships with their fathers, which allows us to examine the question from the perspective of the actor who we argue will be most affected by better relationships. Although a majority of adolescents in our sample had a residential biological father about whom they answered questions, some did not. We examined responses from adolescents across those who had resident biological fathers, resident nonbiological fathers, and nonresident biological fathers. We found few substantive differences across the different kinds of fathers on our outcome variables; as a result, we measured variables relating to fathers first by including information about resident biological fathers. If such information was not available, we included information about resident nonbiological fathers. If information about neither kind of residential father was available, we included information about nonresident biological fathers. We created variables measuring two outcomes tapping adolescents’ relationship with fathers: child’s perception of their relationship with their father and the number of recent activities that the child engaged in with the father. Perceived closeness between adolescents and fathers was indicated by a variable reported by adolescents asking how close they feel to their father. Responses ranged from 1 (not at all close to my father) to 5 (very close to my father). Adolescents who engaged in more activities with their fathers were spending more time with their fathers. We constructed a variable that indicated how many activities a child reported participating in with their father in the last 4 weeks. The eight variables used to create this index included going shopping, going to church, talking about life, talking about parties, talking about school grades, working on projects together, and going to special events. To avoid endogeneity, we omitted playing sports together as one of the activities. Although we would typically use tools like Cronbach’s alpha to assess the reliability of such constructs, these tests violate Rubin’s rules of combination and are, therefore, inappropriate to use with multiply imputed data (Rubin, 1987). We note, instead, that we followed previous research in creating these paternal relationship constructs that used the same AddHealth data and structural equation measurement models to derive the measures and found strong evidence of reliability for them (Hoffmann & Dufur, 2018). By measuring the relationship in terms of perceived closeness and number of activities, we captured how sports influence both the emotional attachment that children feel toward their fathers and how sports influence the number of shared activities between father–child.

Key Independent Variables

Participation in Sports

We considered any participation in sport using a binary variable indicating whether respondents had participated in any sport in the last year (participated = 1; did not participate = 0). The survey did not distinguish between interscholastic and other kinds of sports, but based on national data from the National Federation of State High School Associations, it is clear that youth sport participation is “pyramid-shaped” in that access narrows as youth age and sport becomes more connected to secondary schooling. As a result, we argue that it is safe to assume that many fewer fathers are able to be directly involved in coaching or other support activities as their children age into adolescence and participate in sports that are managed by professionals. This allows us to extend the scenario Knoester and Randolph (2019) studied to whether sport participation facilitates paternal relationships even when fathers are only indirectly involved in the sport or are only spectators.

Participation in Sports by Sex

For our foundational model testing sport participation for all adolescents, we used a binary variable that measures the respondent’s sex (male = 0; female = 1). To test for differences across sex and sport participation, we created a categorical variable including categories for boys who played any sport, boys who played no sports, girls who played any sport, and girls who played no sports. The sex variable in the survey did not include categories for transgender and nonbinary respondents; we acknowledge that sports may play a different role in the relationship between these individuals and their fathers.

Control Variables

We followed Knoester and Randolph (2019) in including a number of control variables that might be related both to sport participation and to adolescents’ reported closeness to fathers. We controlled for background characteristics like race, socioeconomic status, parental health, family structure, and number of siblings (see Table 1 for a description of all variables).

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics of Focal and Control Variables: AddHealth

Description Range Mean/proportion SD
Dependent variables
 Paternal closeness
  Perceived relationship with father Self-reported closeness to father 1–5 Not at all: 4.21
Very little: 6.14
Somewhat: 16.26
Quite a bit: 26.09
Very much: 47.3		 N/A
  Activities with father Self-reported number of activities with father in the last 4 weeks 0–8 2.39 1.771
Independent variables
 Any sport participation Adolescents report if they participated in sports 0–1 Yes: 43.39
No: 56.61		 N/A
 Sport participation by sex Adolescents report if they participated in sports by their sex 1–4 No sport boys: 17.48
Sport boys: 31.11
No sport girls: 25.9
Sport girls: 25.46		 N/A
Controls
 Sex Biological sex of respondent 0–1 Male: 48.63
Female: 51.37		 N/A
 Race Self-reported racial group 1–6 White: 60.35
Hispanic: 10.65
Black: 21.21
Native: 2.61
Asian: 4.04
Other: 1.14		 N/A
 Parental health Scale showing the poorest health of parents 1–5 3.33 1.027
 Family structure Type of family structure 1–3 Two parent bio: 50.47
Blended: 15.67
Single parent: 33.86		 N/A
 Number of siblings Number of siblings the respondent has 0–12 1.385 1.176
 Parental income Total household income in thousands 6–100 (in thousands) 42.337 26.355
 Parental education Highest year of education in home 1–20 14.12 3.311
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Note. N = 5,700.

Analytic Strategy

Our first test of the association between youth sport participation and paternal closeness uses participation in any sport among all adolescents in the sample. We used ordered logistic regression analyses to predict adolescents’ perceptions of closeness to father and ordinary least squares regression to predict activities with father (Table 2). Alternative models for activities suited to predicting count variables produced very similar results for the models predicting activities, so we present the ordinary least squares results here. We then turned to models that look at potential gender differences, using sex–sport categories to test associations with paternal closeness (Table 3) and activities (Table 4).

Table 2.

Ordered Logistic and OLS Regressions of Perceived Relationship With Father and Activities With Father by Participation in Any Sport

Perceived relationship with father (ORs) Activities with father (OLS coefficients)
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Any sport 1.327*** (0.074) 1.189** (0.069) 0.259*** (0.053) 0.19*** (0.055)
Female 0.571*** (0.29) 0.585*** (0.03) −0.059 (0.047) −0.032 (0.047)
Hispanic 0.951 (0.082) 0.953 (0.083) 0.002 (0.08) 0.008 (0.08)
Black 1.007 (0.066) 1.008 (0.066) 0.018 (0.061) 0.019 (0.061)
Native 1.015 (0.16) 1.016 (0.16) 0.283 (0.148) 0.287 (0.148)
Asian 0.891 (0.114) 0.899 (0.115) −0.069 (0.12) −0.06 (0.12)
Other 0.445*** (0.103) 0.45*** (0.104) −0.34 (0.222) −0.332 (0.221)
Parental income 0.1 (0.002) 0.1 (0.002) 0.002 (0.001) 0.001 (0.001)
Parental education 0.983 (0.01) 0.98 (0.01) 0.068*** (0.009) 0.066*** (0.009)
Parent health 1.05 (0.031) 1.047 (0.031) 0.046 (0.025) 0.043 (0.025)
Blended 0.476*** (0.034) 0.477*** (0.035) −0.15* (0.068) −0.146* (0.068)
Single parent 0.33*** (0.022) 0.329*** (0.022) 0.101 (0.061) 0.102 (0.061)
Siblings 1.038 (0.023) 1.035 (0.329) −0.021 (0.02) −0.024 (0.02)
Cut 1 −2.973 (0.072) −4.114 (0.169) −4.059 (0.17) Constant 2.244*** (0.039) 1.246*** (0.143) 1.18*** (0.144)
Cut 2 −2.005 (0.053) −3.119 (0.161) −0.306 (0.162)
Cut 3 −0.857 (0.043) −1.909 (0.157) −1.851 (0.158)
Cut 4 0.27 (0.042) −0.703 (0.155) −0.644 (0.156)
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Note. The SE values are in parentheses. N = 5,700. OLS = ordinary least square; OR = odds ratio.

*

p < .05.

**

p < .01.

***

p < .001.

Table 3.

Ordered Logistic Regression of Perceived Relationship With Father by Sports Participation for Boys and Girls

Bivariate Controls Multivariate
Mean perceived relationship Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Boys no sports 4.12
Boys sports 4.28 1.323a,c,d (0.122) 1.303a,c,d (0.124)
Girls no sport 3.84 0.648a,b,d (0.056) 0.643a,b (0.056)
Girls sports 3.96 0.758a,b,c (0.063) 0.709a,b (0.061)
Hispanic 0.954 (0.083) 0.954 (0.83)
Black 1.007 (0.066) 1.003 (0.066)
Native 1009 (0.159) 1.019 (0.161)
Asian 0.908 (0.116) 0.894 (0.114)
Other 0.436*** (0.101) 0.447*** (0.104)
Parental income 0.999 (0.002) 0.999 (0.002)
Parental education 0.983 (0.01) 0.981 (0.01)
Parental health 1.063* (0.031) 1.046 (0.031)
Blended 0.489*** (0.035) 0.476*** (0.035)
Single parent 0.332*** (0.022) 0.329*** (0.022)
Siblings 1035 (0.022) 1.035 (0.023)
Cut 1 −3.257 (0.092) −3.754 (0.165) −4.004 (0.174)
Cut 2 −2.286 (0.077) −2.765 (0.157) 3.008 (0.166)
Cut 3 −1.126 (0.07) −1.571 (0.153) −1.796 (0.162)
Cut 4 0.018 (0.069) −0.386 (0.152) −0.589 (0.161)
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Note.Coefficients represent ORs. The SE values are in parentheses. N = 5,700. The authors note that most of the coefficients were significant p < .001. OR = odds ratio.

*

p < .05.

***

p < .001.

Comparison with boys no sports: ap < .05. Comparison with boys sports: bp < .05. Comparison with girls no sports: cp < .05. Comparison with girls sports: dp < .05.

Table 4.

The OLS Regression of Activities With Father by Sports Participation for Boys and Girls: AddHealth

Bivariate Controls Multivariate
Mean activities Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Boys no sports 2.17
Boys sports 2.56 0.382a,c (0.08) 0.314a,c,d (0.079)
Girls no sports 2.29 0.118d (0.077) 0.101b (0.076)
Girls sports 2.44 0.264a,c (0.078) 0.183a,b (0.078)
Hispanic 0.002 (0.08) 0.008 (0.08)
Black 0.018 (0.061) 0.012 (0.061)
Native 0.282 (0.148) 0.287 (0.148)
Asian −0.067 (0.12) −0.066 (0.12)
Other −0.343 (0.222) −0.344 (0.221)
Parental income 0.002 (0.001) 0.001 (0.001)
Parental education 0.068*** (0.009) 0.066*** (0.009)
Parental health 0.047 (0.025) 0.042 (0.025)
Blended −0.148* (0.068) −0.147* (0.068)
Single parent 0.1 (0.061) 0.101 (0.061)
Siblings −0.021 (0.02) −0.024 (0.02)
Constant 2.17*** (0.061) 1.21*** (0.141) 1.104*** (0.149)
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Note. The SE values are in parentheses. N = 5,700. The authors note that most of the coefficients were significant p < .001. OLS = ordinary least square.

*

p < .05.

***

p < .001.

Comparison with boys no sports: ap < .05. Comparison with boys sports: bp < .05. Comparison with girls no sports: cp < .05. Comparison with girls sports: dp < .05.

Results

Table 1 shows descriptive statistics for all variables. The mean for perceived paternal closeness shows that the majority of the respondents reported being very close to their fathers, but the mean number of activities that youth reported participating in with their fathers was around two of the eight listed activities. More boys (63%) than girls (50%) participated in sports, and 56% of the total sample participated in at least one sport. Control variables were distributed as expected.

Participating in Sports

First, we analyzed the effect of sports participation on both perceived paternal relationships and the number of activities that adolescents participate in with their fathers (Table 2). Model 1 for each outcome includes only sport participation and demonstrates a statistically significant positive relationship between sport participation and relationships with fathers (p < .001 for both outcomes). Youth who played sports were more likely to report close relationships with their fathers and participate in more activities with their fathers. Model 2 shows that girls were less likely to report close relationships with fathers (p < .001), but that gender had no statistically significant effect on the number of activities that children engaged in with their fathers. Higher parental education is associated with participating in more activities with fathers. Living in a blended family has a negative effect on both types of paternal closeness.

Model 3 examined the association between sport participation and relationships with fathers in the presence of control variables. Inclusion of controls slightly attenuated the relationship between sports participation and both perceived relationship and activities, but sport participation continued to have a positive and statistically significant relationship with both measures of paternal relationship. Although gender played no significant role in predicting the number of activities with fathers, a gender gap persisted in paternal closeness (p < .001). Girls may have engaged in activities with their fathers at the same rate as their male counterparts, but they were less likely to view their relationship as positively even when we controlled for sports participation. Parental education continued to be associated with better relationships, whereas living in a blended family continued to be associated with worse relationships. As described in the measurement section earlier, we found few differences across father types on outcomes, so we conclude both that sports participation acts to promote paternal relationships in similar ways across different types of fathers and that our measure of family structure is capturing something about how the experience of living in such families influences paternal relationships that goes beyond merely having a residential or biological father in one’s life. Across both outcomes, these models provide support for our first hypothesis that sports participation is associated with better adolescent relationships with fathers.

Participation in Sports by Sex

Second, we hypothesized that sports participation might operate differently in predicting paternal relationships for boys and girls given historic associations between sports and masculinity. The results from Tables 1 and 2 further suggest examining this relationship as girls were less likely to play sports than boys but also reported relationships with fathers that were not as close. We repeated the aforementioned models, breaking out sports participation by respondent sex.

Table 3 presents ordered logistic regression of perceived paternal closeness on sports participation for boys and girls. Boys who played sports reported, on average, having the closest relationship to their fathers (4.28), whereas girls who did not play sports reported having the least close paternal relationships (3.84). Model 1 provides the bivariate relationship in odds ratios. Boys who played sports reported being closer to their fathers than any other group; boys who did not play sports still reported closer relationships than did girls in both sports categories. Girls who played sports reported higher paternal closeness than girls who did not. Model 2, looking only at controls, showed associations similar to those in Table 2. In the full Model 3, boys who played sports persisted in reporting significantly closer paternal relationships than all other groups, whereas girls were still significantly different from their male counterparts regardless of sport participation. Net of controls, girls who played sports were no longer significantly different from girls who did not. Control variables behaved as they did in previous models. Our findings offer support for our hypothesis that sports participation operates differently by sex, with boys benefitting more from sports participation, and sport participation failing to distinguish among girls.

Table 4 repeats the analyses for sex–sport groups predicting activities with father, this time using ordinary least squares regression. On average, boys who played sports reported doing more with their fathers in the last 4 weeks than other groups (2.56). Boys who did not play sports reported the fewest activities (2.17). Similarly, in the bivariate analyses, we discovered that, on average, boys who played sports did more with their fathers than boys and girls who did not play sports. Girls who played sports also did more with their fathers than boys and girls who did not. The difference between boys and girls who played sports, however, was statistically nonsignificant. Model 2, looking only at controls, showed associations similar to those in Tables 2 and 3. In Model 3, the difference between girls who did and did not play sports was explained by the presence of controls. Furthermore, an effect emerged between boys and girls who played sports, with being male and playing sports significantly associated with doing more with their fathers than being female and playing sports. Participating in sports helped predict activities for both boys and girls; however, it operated in favor of boys who played sports.

Figure 1 presents a bar graph of the predicted number of activities with father by participation in sports for boys and girls, net of controls. Boys who played sports shared the most activities with fathers. Girls who played sports participated in the next most activities with fathers, though they were not significantly different from girls who did not play sports. Boys who did not play sports participated in the fewest activities with fathers in the last month. Taken together, these patterns suggest that adolescent gender and sports participation do work together to influence interactions with fathers, with sports-playing boys benefiting the most. Rather than reflecting a clear split with boys benefiting from sport or girls being punished for participating in masculine-typed activities, the gender effect seems most notable for boys, with boys who did not play sports perhaps hurt by falling outside of masculine stereotypes. We note that these effects appear substantively small; however, our variable accounts for activities in the last 4 weeks, so these small differences magnify over time.

Figure 1 —

Figure 1 —

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Predicted activities with dad by participation in sports and sex: AddHealth 1994–1995. Note. A = different from no sport boys at .05 level or lower; B = different from sport boys at .05 level or lower; C = different from no sport girls at .05 level or lower; D = different from sport girls at .05 level or lower.

Sensitivity Analyses

We tested several alternative specifications of our hypotheses to increase confidence in our findings. We considered the possibility that there might be a dosage, or intensity, effect of participating in multiple sports. We also examined how specific sports that youth play could affect their relationship with their fathers, with a focus on masculine-typed or feminine-typed sports. We attempted to address this in two ways. Some literature claims that girls gravitate to individual sports, whereas boys gravitate to team sports (Colley et al., 2005). We also consulted the National Federation of State High School Associations, which collects data on all high school athletes in the United States, matching sport-specific sex ratios to the years of the AddHealth data collection. Our data did not support any of these alternatives: sport participation was associated with paternal closeness regardless of sport specification. In terms of gender, this may be because similar proportions of boys and girls played individual and team sports or because few youth played sex-atypical sports.

Discussion

The aim of this study is to extend previous literature by identifying the role that participating in organized sport plays in the relationship between fathers and their children during adolescence as well as how gender affects this relationship. While former researchers document the benefits of joint participation in sports between fathers and young children (Knoester & Randolph, 2019), we find that formal adolescent sports participation is also linked to closer relationships with fathers both in terms of adolescents’ perceived closeness and mutual nonsport activities. Across several tests, we find evidence supporting our supposition that encouraging sports participation may be a way to help youth build and maintain stronger relationships with their fathers. Sports seem to facilitate father–child relations through the shared interactions, experiences, symbols, and emotions expressed through sport (Cottingham, 2012) even when fathers are not formally involved in the sport. However, we find evidence that salient gender differences exist in how sports participation affects the father–child relationship in favor of male youth who participate, which echoes the sex matching phenomenon exhibited in the family setting (Nikiforidis et al., 2018).

Our study does have some limitations. The AddHealth data were collected during the 1990s, which, arguably, is a period wherein girls’ participation in sports was more restricted but beginning to increase due to shifting gender norms and greater participation opportunities. Based on our findings here, we speculate that the positive pathways to stronger paternal relationships through sport we find here for boys will have become available to girls who play sports as well. There are, however, two competing hypotheses as to whether the gap between girls and boys in terms of how sport participation is associated with their paternal relationships has fully closed. On one hand, there is strong evidence to suggest that the cultural symbols surrounding sport are still heavily gendered (cf. Rasmussen et al., 2021), and sports remain male dominated (Messner, 2009; Plaza et al., 2017). Similarly, girls still experience gendered barriers to participating in sports (Alvariñas-Villaverde et al., 2017). It is also true that although fathers have become more involved in their children’s lives, they are still less involved than are mothers (Sayer, 2018; Shafer et al., 2020). It is possible, then, that similar data gathered today would demonstrate patterns similar to those in the AddHealth data.

On the other hand, we are hopeful that the potential for girls to enjoy the benefits of closer paternal relationships through sports has increased over time. Men remain more likely to engage with their children through games and play (Dufur et al., 2010), while at the same time, traditional gender norms in families continue to decline in Western settings (Scarborough et al., 2019); in conjunction, these patterns may open the door for men to bond with daughters through sports and games. In addition, there is evidence that fathers now use sports to nurture familial relations (Scheibling & Marsiglio, 2021) and that this specifically extends to parenting girls. For example, the phenomenon of the “girl dad,” wherein fathers support and take pride in daughters’ sports and other accomplishments, has been promoted by highly visible sports personalities like Kobe Bryant (Alston, 2021) and continues to gain traction. We are hopeful that this evidence of greater support of fathers toward girls in sports suggests that sports-playing girls today would be as likely to benefit from sports in terms of building relationships with their father figures as sports-playing boys are. We look forward to more contemporary large-scale data that can adjudicate these questions.

Though our findings concerning gender are intriguing, we lack detailed data to be able to tell how boys playing stereotypically feminine sports or girls playing stereotypically masculine sports find that their sports participation affects their relationships with their fathers. There may be further nuances explained by different sports that are not well represented in these data but that tend to be heavily gendered, such as in gymnastics or boxing. For example, our findings on sport-playing girls raise the question of how fathers deal with the changing landscape of masculinity. We found that sports-playing girls share more activities with their fathers than either boys or girls who do no play sports; fathers may be increasingly willing to accept their daughters’ participation in areas that have historically been associated with “valorized masculinity” (Messner, 2002). However, they may not yet be ready to navigate the other direction with encouraging sons into masculinities that might be more stereotypically identified by feminine markers. This friction playing out in the microcosm of sport is reflective of the struggles surrounding the valuation of masculinities and femininities (England, 2010). Our models could be used with data that can look at girls playing stereotypically masculine sports and boys playing stereotypically feminine sports. We also lack data on fathers’ own sports participation, interest, or involvement; the availability of such data might uncover further nuances in family processes surrounding sport. Our data are also limited to the United States, though we know gendered norms concerning sport differ around the globe (cf. Benn & Dagkas, 2013).

Although we are hopeful that sports-related pathways and symbols have expanded to help girls who play sports, concerns remain for both girls and boys who do not play sports. This may be especially concerning for boys who do not play sports given previous research suggesting that fathers might experience disappointment in sons who do not share sporting success or interest (cf. Hyman, 2009; Omli & LaVoi, 2011). Other activities may not have the same symbolic power as sport, pinching off a potential pathway to build and maintain these key relationships for youth who are uninterested in sport. Understanding how to promote paternal relationships among these groups remains important.

One intriguing site to consider might be esports. Such activities are beyond the scope of our data but are rapidly gaining acceptance as sport, including the creation of collegiate teams that get scholarships for play (Llorens, 2017). Electronic gaming is often associated with negative adolescent outcomes (Charmaraman et al., 2020), but this could be different for gaming that is framed as sport, potentially opening this sports-related pathway to stronger paternal relationships for youth who do not participate in traditional sports and even for those fathers not interested in traditional sports. At the same time, if this pathway is developing, based on other research on gaming, we would expect such pathways to be heavily gendered (cf. Choe et al., 2020; Fox & Tang, 2014). Examining esports might both provide evidence about ways to strengthen father–child relationships for youth who do not participate in traditional sports and provide an avenue, when compared with traditional sports, to examine how these pathways open up to girls over time. The esports industry is relatively new; therefore, we do not yet have a large body of research that connects participation in esports to the large number of positive adolescent outcomes connected to more physical sports. If those positive associations are inextricably linked to extended physical activity, esports may not introduce the same positive pathways to desirable outcomes. However, in terms of the important outcome we study here, father–child relationships, the theoretical paths we suggest could be encouraged through esports, suggesting a fruitful opportunity for inquiry.

Although appropriate caution must be used in applying results from these older data to contemporary settings, one exciting possibility that comes with using these data is that the AddHealth data continue to be collected. The respondents who were initially adolescents in this study are now adults, and many are becoming parents themselves. In time, therefore, researchers will be able to test the intergenerational robustness of our findings and confirm or disconfirm our speculation that the increased inclusion of girls in sports strengthens their paternal relations. The current paper provides intriguing evidence that suggests that formal sports strengthen the parent–child relations, and our findings provide a foundation for future research linking these patterns across generations and cohorts.

Our models could also be used to test whether, like gender, other statuses affect the association between sports participation and paternal relationships. For example, differences in sports accessibility across social groups could mean that adolescents from certain socioeconomic backgrounds benefit more from sports participation than do other groups. A similar examination focusing on socioeconomic status as a potential moderator might be especially interesting given the ways parents might use support of youth sport participation to signal class-based markers of high-quality parenting (cf. Lareau, 2011; Scheibling & Marsiglio, 2021). In addition, although we chose to focus here on paternal relationships because of the historical ties between sport and hegemonic masculinity and to build on the recent Knoester and Randolph (2019) findings, as more women and girls enjoy opportunities to play sports, our models could be used to examine how adolescent sport participation is related to maternal relationships. The models we use here could also be applied both to other forms of sport participation and to other gendered activities. Future research could examine participation in sports fandom, including how intensity of fandom participation or shared fandom might encourage closer relationships with sports-loving fathers.

Acknowledgment

The authors thank John Hoffmann and Miles Marsala for helpful discussion and comments.

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