How bike riding kids talk about bike riding.

Abstract

Abstract There are children who bike regularly despite biking trending otherwise. For the past year, including through the global COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, the researchers have been talking with biking-supportive parents and biking-active kids about their perspectives and experiences of biking. At the heart of this research the researchers wanted to know: what is it about biking that parents and children value so much that they are willing to keep riding, despite the changing context and attitudes toward children's biking? How do parents and children make sense of, negotiate and ultimately resist dominant discourses regarding children's biking, particularly children biking without adult supervision? Through the fall of 2019 and spring of 2020, the researchers held interviews with 19 parents and 24 kids (aged 10 to 16) who rode bikes regularly (at least once a the week), and whenever possible the researchers interviewed parents and children separately. The researchers prefer to use the descriptors of 'kids' (versus children) and 'biking' (versus cycling) to more closely reflect the everyday language used by kids to describe their bicycling activity.