Active mums have active children - study

The more active a mother is, the more physically active her child will be, BBC News reports, citing a UK study of 500 mums and four-year-olds.

But many mothers' exercise levels fell way below recommended levels, it said.

Researchers from Cambridge and Southampton universities used heart-rate monitors to measure activity levels over seven days.

The study, published in Pediatrics, said policies to improve children's health should be aimed at mothers.
Children are not "just naturally active", it concluded, and parents have an important role to play in developing healthy exercise habits early on in life.

As part of the study, 554 four-year-olds and their mothers from Southampton wore a lightweight combined heart-rate monitor and accelerometer on their chests, for up to seven days.

Participants wore it continuously, including while sleeping and doing water-based activities.

Kathryn Hesketh, now a research associate at the Institute of Child Health at University College London, co-led the study and said the data from mothers and children showed a direct, positive association between physical activity in children and their mothers.

"The more activity a mother did, the more active her child. Although it is not possible to tell from this study whether active children were making their mothers run around after them, it is likely that activity in one of the pair influences activity in the other."

She said that for every minute of moderate-to-vigorous activity a mother engaged in, her child was more likely to engage in 10% more of the same level of activity.

So if a mother spends one hour being more active per day, her child may spend 10 minutes being more active per day.

These small differences may seem trivial but over the course of a month or a year they could be significant, she added.

Factors which influenced a mother's activity levels included whether she worked or not and whether the child had brothers or sisters.