The Relationship Between The Family's Participation in Sports And The Orientation of Their Children to Elite SportsSummaryA person’s life from birth until death passes by in a family. For many people, family is among the most important institutions in their lives. The family also has a vital importance in the perpetuity, continuity, and participation of society because it is an environment in which all children and youths spend the first years of their lives. Because of this, the family is a universal and fundamental institution, although its structure and form changes, in all societies. Family teaches children as the place where their process of socialization begins the values and norms of both society and the family. At the end of this process, the child encounters as the product of both the society and family in which they reside and live. In other words, the family has a central role in the transfer of cultural capital. The structure, status, and cultural capital of the family reflects on all cultural practices of the children. Therefore, it is possible to see the effects of family in sports, an important cultural practice. There is a strong relationship between sports and the institution of family. A series of elements, particularly the participation of the parents in sports, the sports they play, their purposes for playing sports, and their expectations from sports, reflect directly on the child, and the child’s relationship with sports forms in this framework. This study structurally-functionally evaluates the relationship of family and sports. And in this framework, the family preserves the importance particularly in terms of the function of socialization, for both society and its members. The attitudes, outlooks, and interests of the parents directly affects children. This study also evaluated Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital and observed the direct effects on children of the cultural capital that the family possesses. The reflections of this can be observed in sports as a cultural practice. This study is important because of this in terms of revealing through sports both that the family is an important institution whose influences maintain over present members and how determinative the family’s cultural capital is. It is a phenomenon that has emerged with many studies that have a direct relationship between the sport of parents and their children's participation in sports. The aim of this study is to find out how those who do sports and who do not do what they do in the face of their children's desire to be an athlete at elite level. The research was conducted in Istanbul. In the study, which was applied to 1000 people, 570 of which were engaged in sports and 430 of which were non-athletes, the data were collected by the researcher with a survey with random sampling method. Findings obtained in this study are presented as cross tables. A high level of significant relationship was found between the status of sports and the children's desire to be athletes at the elite level. According to the findings of the research, the rate of children who want to be athletes at the elite level is very satisfied, the rate of those who say is 77.5% for those who do sports and 69.4% for those who do not do sports. The rate of those who did not mind was found to be 13.5% in the sports group and 21% in the non-sports group. According to another research finding, there is no significant difference between those who say that the rate of those who say that they are opposed is 2.5% while the ones who do not do sports are 3.3%. When we evaluate the results in general, it is seen that sportsmen or parents have more or less directed their children to sports or that their children support elite athletes. The fact that the rate of those who do not mind in the same way is lower than that in the sportsmen shows that the sports families are encouraging their children to participate more in sports. Based on the findings of the research, a highly significant relationship emerged between the status of a family playing sports and children’s inclination to play elite sports. This means that the hypothesis for which we formed a relationship at this high level is supported. Based on this, it is seen that parents who themselves play sports are more encouraging of their children to do elite sports or are more supportive of their children to be athletes at the elite level than parents who do not. These results clearly reveal the effect of the family in both the process of socialization and the transfer of cultural capital. As a result, it is seen that family is among the most important institutions for both society and individuals. Family conveys societal norms, values, traditions and customs, and culture to the individual and captures attention with its properties of providing societal continuity and being a secure port for individuals. The fact that the family is the institution in which socialization first begins and the sole environment in which cultural capital is transferred is the most fundamental indicator of the extent to which it is important for society and individuals. These characteristics of the family directly affect the individuals that live within them. Consequently, children who are in a position of receiver in the early years of life are socialized by their families and engage in society as the carriers of the family’s cultural capital. Sports, as one of the indicators of a family’s cultural capital, is transferred to children in this process of acculturation. In other words, the status of exercise in a family, perspective, expectations, and goals for sports and similar matters are as determinative as the manner in which and purposes for which a child participates in sports.Keywords: Family, participation to sports, elite sport, childAnahtar Kelimeler: Aile, spora katılım, elit spor, çocuk