We found that parents’ awareness of DBR had a significant negative effect on parents’ educational anxiety and a significant positive effect on their children’s off-campus sports by analyzing data from the nationwide sample. The reason for this may be that the introduction of DBR reflects the party’s and the nation’s macro-adjustment to reduce the burden of homework on teenagers and the firm determination to govern off-campus training.20 If parents are aware of the importance of DBR in the current educational system, and the purpose and a series of measures of the education authorities to reduce the burden on students, they may relieve the stress and anxiety about their children’s education. And when parents realize the importance of DBR, it will promote the necessity of youth sports, let parents cooperate with school to ease the burden of assignment and extra-curricular training for young people, and reshape the system of off-campus sports.21 In terms of parent-child influence theory, the interpersonal relationship established by the interaction between parents and children in the family is the earliest social relationship to which people are exposed and which effects individual personality development, social awareness, behavior and many other aspects.22 Because of the young age of compulsory school students, the family is the most important micro-environmental system to which they are exposed, and the important members of the system can have a profound influence on the behavior of teenagers.23 Thus, parental awareness of DBR can influence their children’s out-of-school sports. Encouraging and promoting youth physical activity through policy adjustments has been shown to be very effective overseas, and the investigation of DBR in this study supports the theoretical view as well. Although there is little empirical research to support the idea that youth sports will increase after DBR, some studies7 theorize that DBR may bring opportunities to increase students’ off-campus physical activity, which is consistent with the findings we obtained here.
Our results showed that parents’ education anxiety negatively affected youth off-campus sports, consistent with the prior research24 which also argues that the marginalization of physical education is caused by the utilitarian educational mentality of Chinese parents and the educational anxiety it brings. Chinese parents’ education anxiety is obvious and even called “severe anxiety disorder.” They always want their children to be better than other children, so the phenomenon of over-education is serious, and their children’s learning burden is becoming heavier and heavier, without following the laws of education and the physical and mental development characteristics of adolescents. Only by reducing this anxiety can they untie their children and let their children participate in sports which are beneficial to children’s healthy growth and comprehensive and free development.25
The levels of parents’ educational anxiety in different dimensions vary in scale with respect to each other. For example, parental anxiety about parent–child interactions is seemingly less significant than anxiety about adolescents’ academic performance, which is in turn less important than anxiety about adolescents’ learning attitudes, future development, and adolescents’ choice of school for higher education. We analyzed each dimension of education anxiety separately as a mediating variable to further explain the mechanism and features of the effect of DBR on youth out-of-school sports. The results revealed that anxiety about academic performance, parent-child interaction, and anxiety about learning attitude mediated the effect of parental awareness of DBR on youth off-campus sports.
At present, children’s poor performance can trigger varying degrees of anxiety for many parents in China. If children do not spend all their time on studying, parents will feel insecure. And once the children’s performance drops, the parents will become helpless and furious.26 Many children receive tiger parenting at an early age in order to get good grades. Education becomes a strange pattern of constant repetition of homework exercise, a busy schedule of remedial classes but less extracurricular activities such as sports. This notion of academic achievement as the core goal is a departure from true education. DBR alleviates parents’ anxiety about their children’s academic performance by reducing the burden of homework and extracurricular training on students, which in turn improves youth sports.
Due to the distorted perspective of education, anxiety over the education of their children is overriding the normal life of the family. Meanwhile, parents put too much pressure on their children, when they are overly committed to education, which can cause bad feelings among teenagers and even affect the parent-child relationship.27 DBR reduces the burden on students and stress on parents, and can relieve the anxiety about the relationship between parents and children. Parent-child relationships can improve the level of youth out-of-school sports.28 The prior study29 believes that the release of parental anxiety is associated with parent-child sport. Therefore, parental awareness of DBR can promote youth off-campus sports through the alleviation of parent-child relationship anxiety.
Under the increasing pressure and burden of schooling, teenagers may become resistant to learning. And when this situation happens, parents will become anxious about their children’s learning attitudes. DBR is conductive to building the internal motivation of young people and correcting their own learning attitudes, as well as helping parents to change their parenting style and adjust their expectations, thereby easing their anxiety about their children’s attitudes to learning. The alleviation of parents' anxiety about their children's learning attitudes may facilitate the development of a scientific educational philosophy, create a favorable family sporting atmosphere and promote active participation of youth in off-campus sports.
Our results indicated that parents' anxiety about their children's future development and school choice did not have the mediating effects described above. This may be due to entry into high school being selected and classified according to the results of the secondary school entrance examination at the present stage in China. So DBR may not relieve anxiety about school selection and future development.
Parents’ attitudes toward their children’s participation in sports under DBR did not significantly affect youth off-campus sports, perhaps due to the fact that parents received information about DBR that required additional cognitive processing. It would effectively promote out-of-school sports for adolescents when parents’ education anxiety does reduce. However, if parents’ education anxiety does not relieve, it would be hard for parents’ attitudes toward sports to directly promote youth participation in out-of-school sports in the context of DBR. The moderating effects obtained in this study further reinforces the view that parents’ attitudes toward their children’s participation in physical activity can positively moderate the effect of education anxiety on youth off-campus sports. In other words, youth off-campus sports are more likely to occur under the dual effect of reduced parental education anxiety and positive parental attitudes toward their children’s exercise. Moreover, the role of parents’ educational anxiety alleviation in promoting youth off-campus sports was stronger under the condition of high levels of parental attitudes and weaker under the condition of low levels of attitudes.
In summary, parental awareness of DBR has a positive impact on youth off-campus sports. Parents' anxiety about their children's academic performance, parent-child interaction anxiety and learning attitude anxiety mediate in the process model. And relieving these anxieties will be the key to improving youth off-campus sports under the background of DBR. Parents' attitudes toward students' exercise can magnify the relationship between parents' education anxiety and children's off-campus sports. These have reference significance for further promoting youth sports in the context of DBR.