Unit for Biocultural Variation and Obesity, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London, London, UK.
Institute of Applied Health Research, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Soc Sci Med. 2022 Jan;292:114557. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114557. Epub 2021 Nov 6.
The importance of physical activity in early childhood for establishing long-term health is well understood, yet with the exception of recent WHO guidelines, public health initiatives rarely focus on children below school age. Moreover, little is known about how domestic spaces and day-to-day caring activities influence preschool-age children's physical activity. To examine this, we explore caregivers' perceptions of young children's activities within and outside the home, and we consider how lived experiences of caregiving align (or not) with current physical activity policy.
Semi-structured interviews with 49 parents and grandparents from 16 families were conducted in Oregon, USA; each family had a child aged 3-5 years. Questions focused on caregivers' perceptions of and involvement with children's body weights, activities, and food practices. The interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Our analysis drew on a materialities framework, attending to relationships between children, caregivers, spaces in and around the home, and everyday activities.
Four themes were developed: appropriateness of outside versus inside spaces for physical activity; making accommodations for physical activity in the home; active spaces of care, referring to relationships among space, activity type, and caregiver attention; and mundane movement, or the low-intensity movement of everyday life. Together, the results highlight that children's day-to-day activities cut across a spectrum of movement, mediated by available spaces and caregiving affordances.
Attending to the full spectrum of children's movements highlights how children's activities interlink with family routines, available indoor and outdoor spaces, and the intended uses of these spaces. These interplays between space, care, and physical activity enacted at the household level should inform an integrated, systems-level public health approach to increasing health and well-being for preschool-age children. Suggestions for improvement include coordinating policy development across multiple fields (e.g., housing design, urban planning) that structure the activities of children and their caregivers across 'home' and 'outside' spaces.
人们深知，儿童早期进行身体活动对其长期健康的重要性，但除了世界卫生组织最近的指南外，公共卫生举措很少关注学龄前儿童。此外，人们对于家庭空间和日常照顾活动如何影响学龄前儿童的身体活动知之甚少。为了探究这一问题，我们研究了照顾者对儿童在家内外活动的看法，并考虑了照顾者的亲身体验如何与当前的身体活动政策一致（或不一致）。
我们在美国俄勒冈州对 16 个家庭的 49 名父母和祖父母进行了半结构化访谈，每个家庭都有一个 3-5 岁的孩子。问题集中在照顾者对儿童体重、活动和饮食实践的看法和参与度上。采用主题分析法对访谈进行分析。我们的分析借鉴了物质性框架，关注儿童、照顾者、家庭内外空间以及日常活动之间的关系。
提出了四个主题：户外活动与户内活动的适宜性；为家庭中的身体活动提供便利；照顾中的活跃空间，指的是空间、活动类型和照顾者注意力之间的关系；以及日常活动中的低强度运动。总的来说，这些结果突出了儿童的日常活动跨越了运动的范围，受到可用空间和照顾的辅助作用的影响。
关注儿童活动的全貌突出了儿童的活动与家庭常规、室内外可用空间以及这些空间的预期用途之间的相互联系。这些在家庭层面上进行的空间、照顾和身体活动之间的相互作用，应成为增强学龄前儿童健康和福祉的综合系统层面公共卫生方法的基础。改进建议包括协调多个领域（例如住房设计、城市规划）的政策制定，以规划儿童及其照顾者在“家”和“外”空间中的活动。
