104 | Chapter 14 practised and sport frequency, as well as on the likelihood of switching from practising sport in a club setting to practising sport in a “light” setting or not practising sport at all. The effects of major life events: A resource approach The road to adulthood is marked by milestones such as leaving full-time education, beginning work, engaging in an intimate relationship, starting to cohabit, gettingmarried, andbirthof thefirst child (Arnett, 2007; Kilmartin, 2000; Hirvensalo & Lintunen, 2011). These major life events, also-called “transition events”, represent changes from adolescence to a more adult status within different life domains (Bell & Lee, 2005). These transitions bring new roles and responsibilities, alongside a new organisation of everyday life (Borgers, 2015). How these major life events affect young adults’ sport participation may be understood by looking at changes in the resource balance associated with each life event, especially in terms of spare time and social contacts (Hirvensalo & Lintunen, 2011; Holmes & Rahe, 1967). In the neo-Weberian tradition of looking at social action from a resource perspective (Bourdieu, 1978; Coleman, 1990; Sugden and Tomlinson, 2000; Weber, 1978), life chances – i.e., opportunities to access scarce and valued outcomes, like (club) sport participation – are distributed according to the resources an individual possesses (Breen, 2005). Thus, changes in a person’s sport behaviour during their transition to adulthood may be interpreted as an alternation of their disposition in the field of sport for adapting to a new configuration of spare time and social surroundings (Borgers et al., 2016b; Engel & Nagel, 2011; Pilgaard, 2013). In line with this approach, we reason that changes and differences in the number of sports, the frequency of sport participation, and the switch from a club setting to a “lighter” sport setting (or dropping out of sport altogether) can be explained by changes and differences in temporal and social resources related to the occurrence of major life events. First, temporal resources are a prerequisite for sport participation (Van Houten et al., 2014, 2017). Sufficient spare time has to be available (Schor, 1991), in time slots suited to a specific activity (Gershuny, 2000). General considerations of time budget theory and temporal organisation theory (Southerton, 2006) suggest that time constraints make it hard to create free time slots, thus reducing opportunities for leisure activities (Kraaykamp et al., 2009). This
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