Associations between objectively assessed child and parental physical activity: a cross-sectional study of families with 5-6 year old children.

Lesley Wood,Deborah A Lawlor,Laura Pool,Jesmond Zahra,Janice L Thompson,Russell Jago,Simon J Sebire

doi:10.1186/1471-2458-14-655

Abstract

BackgroundA number of studies have suggested that there is a need to increase the physical activity levels of children. Parents are important influences on children’s behaviour. There is a lack of information about whether there are associations between the physical activity levels of young children and their parents. The current study examined the associations between the physical activity (PA) of parents and their children at age five to six years old, and determined whether any associations differed by child or parent gender or between week and weekend days.MethodsCross-sectional study, with 1267 Year 1 pupils (five to six years of age) and at least one parent from 57 primary schools. Children and parents wore an accelerometer for five days and mean minutes of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA) per day were derived. We used multivariable linear regression to investigate whether parental and child time spent in MVPA was associated with each other. Each model was adjusted for age, child gender, parent BMI and neighbourhood deprivation with subgroup analysis by child gender.Results80% of parents met PA guidelines, however 29% of boys and 47% of girls aged five to six years failed to meet them. Fully-adjusted analyses suggested weak positive associations of parent’s and children’s time spent in MVPA. Every 10 additional minutes of parental MVPA were associated with one additional minute of child MVPA. There was no evidence of a difference in associations for boys and girls or between mothers and fathers.Conclusions29% of boys and 47% of girls aged five to six years did not meet PA guidelines indicating that these children would benefit from new approaches that focus on increasing physical activity. There were weak associations between the MVPA of 5–6 year old children and their parents, demonstrating that the time that children are active with their parents is not a major source of physical activity. Clinicians and public health professionals should encourage parents to create opportunities for their children to be active.

Highlights

A number of studies have suggested that there is a need to increase the physical activity levels of children
Just over 70% of boys met the more stringent 60 minutes recommended for children, with an average 72 minutes spent in moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA)
The data presented in this paper show that 29% of boys and 47% of girls aged five to six years did not meet physical activity (PA) guidelines of 60 minutes per day, and that parental time spent in MVPA was weakly associated with their children’s time spent in MVPA

Summary

Introduction

A number of studies have suggested that there is a need to increase the physical activity levels of children. There is a lack of information about whether there are associations between the physical activity levels of young children and their parents. Previous studies have highlighted that both child and adult PA patterns differ by gender, it is not clear whether there are gender differences in the association between parent and child PA [13,14]. Both children’s and adults’ PA patterns have been shown to differ between weekdays and weekend days [13,15] but whether any association between parental and child PA differs across the week is unknown

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Conclusion