Parents’ exercise habits rub off on their children, according to Swiss study

Parents' exercise rubs off on their children Keystone-SDA

Exercise is contagious - at least in the family. A Swiss study published on Tuesday shows that if parents are physically active, their children also tend to be more active.

The researchers from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) analysed movement data from several hundred parent-child pairs from Switzerland. Over several days, children and parents wore movement sensors that recorded how much time they spent sitting, being slightly active or moving more intensively.

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The results showed that if parents changed their exercise behaviour, the children followed this pattern. However, the effect was significantly weaker in the children. Specifically, the change in the child was around 18 times less when it came to the mother’s behaviour and around 29 times less when it came to the father’s behaviour.

The influence remained visible over several years: even five years after the first measurement, children whose parents were less sedentary in everyday life were more active overall. There was a similar trend for fathers, although this was not statistically clear.

Many children do not get enough exercise

The researchers conclude that parents play an important role as role models – even if their behaviour is not transferred one-to-one to their children. Measures that motivate parents to move more and sit less in everyday life could therefore benefit the whole family.

Although Switzerland is one of the most active countries in Europe, many children and adolescents do not achieve the recommendation of at least 60 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per day, as Swiss TPH emphasised in a press release on the study on Tuesday. “The early promotion of an active lifestyle therefore remains a central task of health policy,” the institute continued.

The data comes from the Sophya cohort study. Between 2013 and 2015 and again between 2019 and 2020, physical activity data was collected in Switzerland from children and adolescents aged 6 to 16 and their parents. The study was published in the Journal of Activity, Sedentary and Sleep Behaviors.

Adapted from German by DeepL/ac

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