Jack,
Read the research, there is no link in what the study undertook - exploration of child-parent relationships - and declining participation - its the media drawing straws (making $#!t up).
Google
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/18377122.2013.760426 for link to the article.
Some useful quotes from parents involved in the study:
You need to teach parents that it's kids’ footy. There’s no premiership at the end of it,
you’re not winning the farmhouse, you know, it’s kids’ footy and the main reason they
are playing kids’ footy is to have fun, play with their mates to have fun . . .maybe if the
parents and everyone was a bit more chilled out, the over-the-top stuff on the sideline
probably wouldn’t happen.
It’s quite loud on the field . . . of course children are picking up on it [verbal abuse]. But
when a coach says, 'That was really disappointing’, you know, it is like, who are the kids
playing for? He [the coach] makes it seem like they’re all playing for him, you know,
disappointing for him. Well get over it sunshine, the kids are out there, playing fun just
to have fun.
We had a situation last year when we were coaching. A couple of parents got involved,
were coming up to the bench, saying ‘Why is Roy off ?’ and it has a decided impact on
the young children because I think they were quite embarrassed. There was one mother
in particular coming up [saying] ‘Why is Roy off?Why is Roy off?’. No matter what I
said to her, she couldn’t seem to accept that they had to come off, that there’s a rotation
system that we’ve got set up when you have too many kids, they have to all share equal
time on the bench . . . . The children, I think, seem to understand it more so than the
parents do; they [the parents] just focus on the one child rather than the team aspect.
And from the authors:
this study is not without its limitations and
should therefore be interpreted with caution. First, these collective perceptions result
from a homogenous sample recruited from one South Australian region.While it was
beyond the scope of the research to capture, with purpose, the influence of
demographic location and/or socioeconomic status on parental involvement, these
variables are important considerations for future research
And the media based the headline on this paragraph
Another interesting aspect of the results surrounded the idea that parents value
winning and success.While parents claimed that winning was not the central purpose
of children’s sport participation, they did agree that it was important. This
perspective adds further insight to the notion that a winning emphasis can reduce
children’s enjoyment, and potentially result in participatory withdrawal (Enoksen,
2011;Wall & Cote, 2007). The results of the present study suggest that there are some
issues surrounding parental involvement in junior Australian football. Although it
should be noted that most parents did not express any explicit examples of aggressive
parental behaviours, the themes suggested that there are some tensions around
parent interactions and relationships with others in junior sport.
Disagree with the media representation not with the depth of the study.