Child, family and environmental correlates of physical activity parenting: The Skilled Kids –study

The support parents provide to their children’s physical activity (PA), i.e. physical activity parenting (PAP), has been shown to be a consistent correlate of children’s PA. Although a wide range of factors are shown to associate with PAP, a comprehensive perspective on the correlates of PAP is still lacking. In the current study, child, family, and environmental correlates of PAP were investigated in families (n = 840) with young children (n = 993; 5.40 ± 1.14 years) and parents (n = 993; 35.8 ± 5.29 years). Parents’ self-reports of PAP (co-participation, (in)direct support, encouragement), child specific (sex, age, temperament, outdoor time, organized physical activity or sports, sedentary time, media time, PA enjoyment, motor skills compared to peers, PA and sport facility use), family specific (respondent’s sex, age, education, exercise frequency, family income, family status, number of children in the family, child’s birth order, and partner’s PAP and exercise frequency), and environment specific (residential density, access to sport and outdoor facilities, type of house, access to electronic devices) factors were collected. Children’s motor skills and anthropometrics were measured. After adjusting for family cluster effect, child, family, and environmental factors were entered into linear mixed effects model with PAP as response variable. Final model consisted of statistically significant factors, except parental education was forced into the model. Nine child- and family factors explained 15 % of parenting variance between the children and 52 % between the families. Partner’s PAP (B = .68, p < .001) had the strongest association, whereas the child’s temperament (B = .08, p < .001) and birth order (B = -.10, p < .001) had smaller but novel associations with the respondent’s PAP. Partner’s physical activity parenting practices and a range of child and family factors should be considered when promoting parental support on child’s PA.