Ethnographical Approaches on Familial Body-Related Practices As Well As Normative Discourses of Parents with the Focus on Gender

What importance does gender have in childhood? When does it become relevant for children? What does it have to do with body and sports? These are some of the questions raised in the progress of our ongoing research.

In the presentation some of the preliminary findings of the research project „Ethnographical approaches on familial bodyrelated practices as well as normative discourses of parents with the focus on gender“ will be introduced. Our research is part of an interdisciplinary joint project which is supported by the Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur from May 2015 to April 2017). The aim of our sub-project is to reconstruct normative discourses on gender and social practices, in which body and gender become relevant in childhood

The focus of the research lays on children at the age from six till ten and the gender-related ideas of normality of their parents. Gender differences are often pre-structured, stabilized or differentiated within family practices. In the research especially those practices, which are related to body and movement, will be explored. A particular aim of the research is to have a closer look at the relevance of gender in (different) given opportunities of learning and experiencing for children. From a sport scientific perspective the main interest lays thereby in the access to officially organized and self-organized sports.

To follow those research questions a mixed-method approach is chosen in our sub-project, which includes ethnographic observations as well as qualitative interviews.