2 | 53 A new life stage, a new sport activity? a sport. Moreover, because of increased time constraints and greater access to social resources, participation in a competitive club sport, with all of the attendant demands and social obligations, will likely become less appealing. We therefore formulate the following hypothesis: Starting to cohabit or getting married reduces the odds of starting a competitive club sport, compared to starting a sport in some other organisational form. Birth of first child The birth of a child brings, alongside love and enjoyment, a demanding new family member who is, additionally, highly dependent on the parents (Minnen & Glorieux, 2004). It produces not only additional work in and around the household, but also new tasks and responsibilities that did not exist before, such as caring for and raising offspring (Van Baelen, 2003). This reduces the amount of free time available to the parents (Ruseski et al., 2011; Van Baelen, 2003) as well as time spend on taking part in sport (Ruseski et al., 2011). Regarding parents’ social contacts, we expect having children to increase these. Parents meet others in similar situations via their children, at antenatal exercise classes, at nursery school or at the day care centre. This sparks new friendships, which make it less necessary to form new contacts via sport activities. Overall, it seems clear that the birth of one’s first child reduces the odds of starting a sport. From the reasoning above, it also follows that in terms of time and social demands, competitive club sport would be less suited to the lifestyle of “young” parents. They experience more time constraints and have less need to make friends via alternate routes, meaning that participation in competitive club sport would presumably be less suited for them. This leads to the following hypothesis: The birth of one’s first child reduces the odds of starting a competitive club sport, compared to starting a sport in some other organisational form.
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