Background
The health benefits of regular physical activity for children and youth are indisputable [
1,
2] and a low level of sedentary screen time [
3] and assurance of adequate sleep [
4] are also associated with desirable health indicators and outcomes. Furthermore, these movement behaviors interact, demonstrating that the composition of behaviors across the whole day are associated with health outcomes [
5,
6]. In response to this evidence, 24-h movement guidelines were developed to provide integrated recommendations for physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep for Canadian children and youth [
7]. Of concern, less than 20% of Canadian children aged 5–17 years adhere to these healthy movement behavior guidelines [
8,
9]. Thus, the promotion of healthy movement behaviors during childhood is important for public health, and understanding the factors that can facilitate effective interventions is of critical importance.
Multiple factors are associated with child and youth movement behaviors spanning from individual-level dispositions to the various settings where children live, study, and play [
10‐
14]. In particular, parents and the household setting can play important roles in the health behavior of children. For instance, parents represent critical agents in bedtime routines for sleep [
15] and screen-time access and duration [
16] as well as being facilitators of physical activity during family time [
17,
18]. Because of this clear link between parental support and child and youth health behavior, parental support of health behavior is being studied as a critical behavior unto itself [
19‐
22].
Parental support is an overarching term used to represent the interactions between a parent and their children in promoting health behavior [
23,
24]. We used the components of logistical support (e.g., facilitating the health behavior, transportation to activities), encouragement (e.g., providing information and praise about the health behavior, spectating), and co-activity (i.e., parent-facilitated support via activity together and not mere modeling) previously proposed for physical activity [
25]. In addition, we included the component of regulatory support (e.g., enforcing rules, setting limits) for sleep and screen time restriction [
24]. At present, the best evidence for physical activity parenting support aligns with these logistical, encouragement, and co-activity support components [
23,
26‐
30], while sleep support and screen time reduction are also correlated with regulatory support [
15,
16,
24]. However, the prevalence of parental support for meeting child and youth movement guidelines is not well understood. Indeed, we were not able to locate any studies that provided an estimate of support prevalence among parents for child movement behaviors at the level of recommended guidelines. One recent study did provide estimates of the prevalence of parental support for physical activity and restricting screen time but the frames of the questions were generalized (e.g., encourage my child to walk or cycle to places) and not anchored to guidelines [
24]. Understanding the prevalence of parents who are in line with the recommended guidelines is helpful because it provides information on which health behaviors are being supported the most among parents and gives direction for where interventions may be most (and least) needed when targeting parental support.
Thus, the first purpose of this paper was to examine the prevalence of parental support for meeting the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth [
7]. We hypothesized that sleep behavior was likely to have the highest support among parents. This was based on the rationale that the benefits of parental support of sleep are well-established [
31], the behavior is highly routinized, the support behavior is low burden (e.g., short in duration each night, no financial cost), and that parents are most likely available for the opportunity to provide sleep support (i.e., home in the evening). Of course, the purpose of the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth is to recognize and appreciate the interactivity of sleep, light physical activity (LPA), moderate-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA), and sedentary behavior on health outcomes [
7]. Therefore, a secondary purpose was to explore the interactive profiles of parental support across these four health behaviors. Given the novelty of this study, we had no specific a priori hypotheses about which of the 16 behavior combination profiles would emerge to describe parents but we did not expect these profiles to be equally distributed.
The third purpose was to explore the sociodemographic and social cognitive correlates of these parental support profiles of the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth. Previous research on sociodemographic correlates has produced mixed and generally null results when exploring factors such as social capital, gender of parent, age of parent, parental ethnicity, and family income, yet child age has been a fairly consistent correlate of parental support [
24,
25,
32‐
36]. Specifically, younger children receive more parental support than older children and youth. Similar findings have been reported for sleep [
31] and sedentary behavior [
16], and likely reflect the increasing autonomy of behavior granted by parents as their children move through adolescence. Based on this evidence, we hypothesized that child age would correlate with the interactive profiles of parental support of the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines. Specifically, we hypothesized that parents of younger children would be present in the higher support clusters (i.e., support of more behaviors) than the lower support clusters compared to parents of adolescents.
To explore the social cognitive correlates of the interactive profiles of parental support, we employed key antecedent constructs of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) [
37]. This theory suggests that the foundations of behavioral motivation and subsequent action are predicated on affective (enjoyment) and instrumental (utility) attitudes, subjective norm (perceived social pressure), and perceived behavioral control (ease/difficulty of performing the behavior). Perceived control is comprised of at least two fundamental composites relevant to parenting support:
perceived opportunity and
perceived capability [
37,
38]. Perceived opportunity is the perceived time and available access that can allow one to perform the behavior [
38]. Perceived capability represents perceptions of physical and mental ability, capacity, or competence to perform a specific circumscribed behavior [
39]. The TPB has been validated as an effective framework to explain parental support of child and youth physical activity, with perceived behavioral control showing the largest association with parental support, followed by attitude [
21,
22,
25,
40‐
42]. Thus, we hypothesized that higher values of all TPB constructs would be associated with higher support clusters (i.e., support of more behaviors) than lower support clusters compared to parents with lower values of these TPB constructs.
Finally, based on the integrated nature of the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth, and the critical importance of understanding multiple health behavior change [
43‐
45], we sought to explore the predictive compatibility of parental support social cognitions compared to their generality of prediction across other health behaviors in these integrated profiles. The TPB [
37] suggests that cognitions are context and action specific (i.e., an attitude about supporting physical activity should predict physical activity support) and may not generalize to other actions or contexts (i.e., an attitude about supporting physical activity may not link to supporting sleep). Despite this tenet of specificity, there is great potential benefit in interventions if health promotion of one behavior can affect subsequent health promotion of another behavior and this is highly relevant to integrated health behavior guidelines. Thus, an exploration of the compatibility versus generality of support cognitions when predicting parental support of the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines has relevant value. We hypothesized, based on the TPB [
37], that social cognitions about parental support would favor prediction compatibility over prediction generality.
Discussion
The purpose of this paper was to explore the prevalence of parental support for meeting the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines and its component parts [
7] among a representative sample of Canadian parents, identify key integrative support profiles among the four movement behaviors, and investigate subsequent sociodemographic and social cognitive correlates of these profiles. We hypothesized that sleep behavior was likely to have the highest prevalence of support among parents. This hypothesis was supported. Specifically, sleep (9–11 h for 5–12 year-olds) had the highest support with 72.7% of parents reporting they supported this behavior on most days of the week. The findings align with prior rationale that the benefits of parental support of sleep are well-established [
31]. We also speculated that parental support of sleep behavior is likely higher than other movement behaviors because it is low burden (e.g., short in duration each night) and thus easier to accomplish, and that parents are most likely available for the opportunity to provide sleep support (e.g., home in the evening). There was indirect support for this hypothesis because screen time restriction (49.2% of parents supported at guidelines) and LPA (44.4% of parents supported at guidelines) followed by MVPA (23.2% of parents supported at guidelines) were all markedly lower than support for child and youth sleep. Physical activity is likely the most time-, resource-, and effort involved support behavior, with parental supports that span both encouragement and logistical elements. These results suggest that more intervention attention to parental support should be placed on MVPA, followed by LPA and screen-time, compared to sleep behavior.
Of course, the purpose of the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth is to highlight the integration of sleep, LPA, MVPA, and sedentary behavior on health outcomes [
7]. Therefore, the novel contribution of this research was to explore the interactive profiles of parental support across these four health behaviors. We had no specific a priori hypotheses about which of the 16 profiles would emerge to describe parents, but we did not expect these profiles to be equally distributed. This expectation was supported as only six of 16 potential support clusters had a meaningful sample size. These profiles were: 1. no support for any guideline (19.0%), 2. sleep support only (15.6%), 3. screen time and sleep support (15.1%), 4. LPA, screen time and sleep support (14.4%), 5. LPA and sleep support (6.8%), and 6. support of all guidelines (14.2%).
Several interesting findings emerged from these clusters. First, there was strong representation of parents at the poles of these support behaviors. A large proportion (~ a third) of the sample reported either providing no support for their child/youth at the level of the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines or provided full support of these behaviors at this level. This suggests considerable heterogeneity on the spectrum of parental support. Furthermore, the largest prevalence among all parent groups was for no support of the guidelines. This is concerning and highlights the importance of interventions. A second point of interest in these distributions was that sleep support behavior emerged as stand alone from all other health behaviors. While this echoes the very high prevalence of parents who support their child or youth’s sleep, it also highlights that sleep is not integrative as suggested by the premise of the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines. Finally, it was interesting to note that MVPA support was only featured in the cluster where all other guidelines were supported. This finding is commensurate with our rationale that MVPA support is likely the most burdensome behavior with considerable volume and scope of supports that are required [
20,
23,
26,
28,
29]. Specifically, only the most involved parents, who supported their children at the level of all health behavior guidelines, also supported MVPA for their children and youth most days of the week.
Though five of these profiles of parental support highlight potential targets for intervention, an understanding of their correlates is required in order to develop effective interventions. Thus, the third purpose of our study was to explore the sociodemographic and social cognitive correlates of these parental support profiles of the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth. For sociodemographic factors, we hypothesized that parents of younger children would be present in the higher support clusters (i.e., support of more health behaviors) than the lower support clusters compared to parents of adolescents. This hypothesis was supported. Indeed, a near linear relationship was observed between the number of health behaviors supported and the age of the child. Thus, the group who did not support at the level of the guidelines was comprised primarily of parents of teenagers. Some of the rationale for this age differentiation may be due to the autonomy afforded to developing youth by parents and thus a sensible approach to parenting [
56]. Nevertheless, given the low prevalence of the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines among adolescents, this hands-off parenting approach may be premature and thus represents an important avenue for intervention upon parental support. This is somewhat counter-intuitive with the present research and intervention approaches that has a heavy focus on health behavior parenting in young children [
57]. These data suggest that interventions for parental support among teenagers may be critical given the considerable opportunity for behavior to be shaped in positive ways that may improve longer term health outcomes [
58].
The only other sociodemographic variable that was a consistent correlate across the support clusters was the gender of the parent. Fathers were associated with lower support of the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines compared to mothers. Though it has not been a consistent demographic correlate in any of these health behaviors in univariate analyses [
15,
24,
25,
32‐
36,
59], these results suggest that the differences in father and mother support could be amplified through this examination of multiple health behavior support profiles. Further, the lack of engagement of fathers in health behaviors such as physical activity has been identified in past research even if this finding is not always consistent [
2,
59‐
61] and a paucity of interventions focused on sedentary behavior and physical activity with a specific focus on fathers has been duly noted [
62]. Our results are in agreement with this past research and supports focused interventions that target fathers in promoting the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth.
To explore the social cognitive correlates of these interactive profiles of parental support, we employed key antecedent constructs of the TPB [
37]. We hypothesized that higher values of all TPB constructs would be associated with higher support clusters (i.e., support of more behaviors) than lower support clusters compared to parents with lower values of these TPB constructs. The hypothesis was supported. The results are aligned with past research that has employed the TPB to understand [
21,
25] and promote parental support of physical activity [
22,
40,
41], yet these findings show that the TPB can also distinguish across health behavior support clusters of the 24-Hour Movement behaviors. There were some deviations in the predictive utility of the TPB depending on what health behavior was the focus of the questions. Specifically, social cognitions about MVPA support were consistently within the medium effect size range [
55], LPA support and sleep cognitions were consistently in the low-end of the large effect size range, while screen support social cognitions were the highest reported effect sizes.
We also sought to explore the predictive compatibility of parental support social cognitions compared to their generality of prediction across other health behaviors in these interactive profiles. We hypothesized, based on TPB [
37], that social cognitions about parental support would favor prediction compatibility over prediction generality. This hypothesis was supported. TPB constructs were able to predict their target behavior across 84% of the tests, while they predicted another health behavior in only 38% of tests. The results underscore that cognitions about support for one health behavior are not likely related to another health behavior. Thus, parents do likely require interventions that target each specific behavior where there is a deficit in support. While there is elegance in multiple behavior change interventions [
43‐
45], these results generally support the premise that coordinated effort is needed with considerations of the unique features of each health behavior [
63]. Nevertheless, assessment of social cognitions toward the overall integrated guidelines may better emphasize their interactivity and complementarity and future research would be helpful in order to test this possibility.
Despite the original findings of this paper, the results should be considered within the context of several limitations. First, the study features a passive cross-sectional design. Causal attributions in these types of designs are not possible. Second, our TPB model omitted the subjective norm construct and an examination of how norms as well as other potentially important correlates (habits, environmental cues) may relate to parental support seems useful in future research. Third, though dichotomizing the parental support variables was helpful in providing an understanding of these health behaviors at the threshold of the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth, it is important to note that parents below these guidelines does not equate to “no support”. Fourth, our measures of parental support have shown predictive validity in past research [
25,
42,
46,
47], but the validity of this measure has not been compared to other available measures of parental support. Finally, our sample showed generally strong representation of the Canadian population, but may not generalize to specific geographical locales or cultures. Future research is needed to test the generalizability of these findings.
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