This chapter examines positive youth development (PYD) in the social, cultural, and historical context in which it has emerged and been linked with sports. It also focuses on the particular approach to development commonly associated with PYD, why sport is seen as an appropriate context for PYD, the challenges of integrating PYD into existing youth sport programs, and the prospects for using sports as sites for fostering PYD. The belief that sport participation leads to PYD received a major boost in the 1980s as neoliberal ideology increasingly informed national economic doctrine and political policy in many societies. During the late 1960s and early 1970s development was linked with community organization and coordinating local political and economic resources to achieve civil rights, social justice, and the common good. Most PYD projects, influenced by neoliberal cultural orientations, tend to be excessively child-centered and do little to hold “children to anything resembling objective standards”.
