Factors Influencing on the Parental Support of Children ’ s Physical Activity

The objective of this study was to examine the impact of parental support of physical activity and parentsʼ past levels of competitiveness in sports on parenting attitudes. The research subjects were 256 parents of freshman students in a universityʼs Health and Sports Science Department and Medical Department. The time period of this research was November 2014 to January 2015. Questionnaires included the Parental Support Scale, the past levels of competitiveness in sports, and the Parenting Attitude Scale. The exploratory actor analyses were conducted on the Parental Support Scale and the Parenting Attitude Scale, separately. The results revealed that the Parental Support Scale consisted of 3 factors with 4 items each (total of 12 items) and the Parenting Attitude Scale consisted of 2 factors with 4 items each (total of 12 items). The reliabilities and validities of these two scales were also assessed. In the multiple regression analyses, the Parental Support Scale was set as a dependent variable, and the Parenting Attitude Scale and the level of competitiveness in sports were set as independent variables. The analyses were conducted separately on fathers and mothers and separately on male and female children. The path models showed the gender difference between fathers and mothers and difference between male and female children, and both the parenting attitude and the level of competitiveness in sports distinctively influenced on the parental support of childrenʼs physical activity. When we considered past levels of competitiveness in sports and parental support of physical activity as potential factors affecting parenting attitudes, the latter factor had an impact among both fathers and mothers, whereas the former factor was significant only among mothers. Parents should increase their emphasis on responsiveness when raising boys and on demandingness when raising girls to contribute to improvement in their parenting attitude.


Introduction
The amount of time that children spend engaging in physical activity has been decreasing, thus hampering their mental and physical health.However, various triggers exist that can be used to encourage children to make exercising a habit and to adopt healthy lifestyles.Furthermore, it is desirable that children begin exercising during childhood, because people who develop good exercise habits at a young age have a high likelihood of maintaining these habits in later years.
It is believed that childrenʼs practice of exercise is greatly impacted by their own decision-making processes as well as by the impact of the environment in which they live, i.e., their school, neighbors, friends, and family.In particular, the approach taken by the childʼ s family is considered very influential.Trost et al. 1) emphasized the importance of parental support in directly promoting healthy behavior, physical activity, and a sense of selfefficacy in children.Welk 2) identified four aspects of positive parental support: encouragement, involvement, facillitation, and modeling.Konno et al 3) 4) .has indicated that these four parenting attitudes impact the shaping of a childʼ s exercise habits from elementary school to college.
So what factors underlie the formation of positive parenting attitude?Taking into account the values, thought processes, and actions of parents, as well as their responses and behavior toward their children, we have focused on the following factors that impact parenting attitude: parentsʼ past levels of competitiveness in sports and their attitude toward educating their children.Among the various ideas regarding parental support of physical activity is a proposal by Baumrind 5) .Treating parental support of physical activity as encompassing the motherʼs way of thinking about her child and her direct behavior toward her child, she described the two central dimensions as responsiveness and demandingness.However, there is little research in Japan that applies these concepts; rather, most of the existing research has examined the relationship between childrenʼs social behavior and self-control, and the relationship between children and parenting attitude has yet to be explored.
Therefore, this study examines the impact of parental support of physical activity and parentsʼ past levels of competitiveness in sports on the basis of their parenting attitude toward their children.Clarifying the relationships between these factors, thereby allowing parents to provide the most desirable form of support, should help more children to develop good habits of physical activity at an early age, thereby preserving their mental and physical health more effectively.The objective of this study was to examine the impact of parental support of physical activity and parentsʼ past levels of competitiveness in sports on parenting attitudes.

Research subjects and time period
The research subjects were 256 parents of freshman students in a universityʼ s Health and Sports Science Department and Medical Department.The time period of this research was November 2014 to January 2015.

Research content a) Parenting attitude
Referring to the criteria used in previous studies 2) 6) , the authors added additional items, resulting in seven items for each of Welkʼ s four factors, thus producing a total of 28 items; responders were instructed to choose from among four choices.Consistent with Welk 2) , the four areas were encouragement (e. g., praising the childʼ s physical activity and proactively giving feedback), involvement (e.g., playing with the child and teaching the child various ways to play), facillitation (e.g., taking the child to the playground or getting sports and exercise equipment for the child), and modeling (e. g., the parent engaging in physical activity in front of the child).b) Parental support of physical activity Referring to the criteria used by Robinson et al. 8) and Nakamichi et al. 9) , which were in turn selected from the criteria developed by Baumrind 7) , eight items were constructed for each factor, resulting in a total of 16 items; responders were instructed to choose from among four choices.The two factors were responsiveness (actions that consider the childʼ s intention and desires and that enrich the childʼ s intentions as much as possible by using loving words and physical expression) and demandingness (regardless of the childʼ s intentions, the parent decides what is best for the child and forces that upon the child).c) Past levels of competitiveness in sports Information regarding past levels of competitiveness in sports was requested, in terms of middleand high-school sports activities as well as competitive performance in (1) regional competitions, (2) prefectural competitions, and (3) national competitions.

Analysis
First, exploratory factor analysis (principal factor method, promax rotation) was conducted regarding parenting attitude and parental support of physical activity.For each item, the standard was set at an eigenvalue of over 1.0 and a factor load of over 0.40, and the items with high loading on multiple factors were eliminated.The analysis was repeatedly conducted in order to assess these itemsʼ reliability and validity.
Next, in order to clarify the impact on parenting attitude, parental support of physical activity and past levels of competitiveness in sports were made independent variables, and parenting attitude was made a dependent variable; multiple regression analysis (stepwise method) was repeatedly conducted.For the analysis, the factor of gender was taken into account: the parents were separated between fathers and mothers and their children between boys and girls.
For statistical processing, SPSS Statistics 22, Amos version 22 was used, and the significance level was less than 5%.

Characteristics of the research sample
The parents included 119 fathers (whose children were 80 boys and 39 girls) and 137 mothers (whose children were 89 boys and 48 girls); the parentsʼ average age was 50.5 ± 3.87 years, with a range from 41 to 61 years (Table-1).

Factor analysis
a) Parenting attitude toward the child A three-factor structure was extracted to define the relationship between parental behavior and parenting attitude (Table -2).The first factor was modeling, the second factor was facillitation, and the third factor was guidance.This factor structure differed from those of Welk 2) and Kinoshita et al. 6) .However, each item was appropriate in terms of the content, the interpretation of the factors led to the same substantive conclusions, and in terms of internal consistency, a high coefficient of reliability was achieved.In addition, the degree of suitability for modeling was high at GFI = .929,AGFI = .892,CFI = .954,and RMSEA = .069;thus, it could be determined that the factorsʼ validity was confirmed, and an analysis using this three-factor structure was conducted.-3).The first factor was responsiveness and the second factor was demandingness.This factor structure was the same as that in previous research 8) , and although the α coefficient was slightly low in terms of internal consistency, a constant coefficient of reliability was achieved.Furthermore, the degree of suitability of the modeling was high at GFI = .969,AGFI = .942,CFI = .949,and RMSEA = .059;thus, the factorsʼ validity was confirmed, and an analysis using this two-factor structure was conducted.

Multiple regression analysis
Multiple regression analysis was repeatedly conducted with parenting attitude as a dependent variable and parental support of physical activity and past levels of competitiveness in sports as independent variables (Figures- 1 and 2).Different path modeling was found for the fathers and mothers; in addition, for boys and girls, further differences in paths were observed.In terms of the five factors extracted from the subscales of parenting attitude and parental support of physical activity, the average value and standard deviation for parents (father, mother)× children (boy, girl) was calculated; for all factors, there was no significant difference between boys and girls.As such, it can be concluded that differences in the path modeling regarding the gender of the parents and children were not significant and were caused by the relationships with the parents.
For the father, a direct path from past levels of competitiveness in sports to parental support of physical activity and parenting attitude was not observed, but a path from parental support of physical activity to parenting attitude was observed.Among this, for the boys, all the subscales from responsiveness to aspects of parenting attitude were significant, and for the girls, the paths from demandingness to modeling and facillitation were significant.For the father, in terms of parenting attitude, there was no impact of past levels of competitiveness in sports, and for parental support of physical activity, the impact differed according to whether the child was a boy or a girl.Specifically, for boys, actions that heightened responsiveness were deemed effective to heighten parenting attitude of support when educating the child; for the girls, actions that heightened demandingness were deemed more effective.
As for the mother, in terms of the path from past levels of competitiveness in sports to parenting attitude, there was a positive path to boysʼ modeling and guidance, and a negative path to girlsʼ modeling.This path modeling differs from that of the father; in particular, the negative path for the girls was significant, thus signifying the need to pay careful attention to the support provided to girls.For the path from parental support of physical activity to parenting attitude, the positive path from the boysʼ responsiveness to guidance and the negative paths from the girlsʼ demandingness to guidance and the boysʼ demandingness to facilitation were significant.The impact of parental support of physical activity on parenting attitude among mothers also differed from that among fathers, and several negative paths were observed; however, it was found that higher levels of responsiveness for boys and demandingness for girls positively impacted parenting attitude.In contrast to the fathersʼ results, the fact that negative paths could be observed for the mothers and the presence of differences according to the childʼ s gender suggest the possibility that considering the childʼs gender and paying attention to the specific factors that contribute to parental support of physical activity could result in a certain degree of improvement in parenting attitude.
In the future, when examining the impact on parenting attitude in addition to assessing the connection of the two factors of responsiveness and demandingness in terms of parental support of physical activity, research should be conducted to assess the connection between authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting and the rise and fall of each factor, as Baumrind demonstrated 5) .Moreover, considering not only the parental support of physical activity but also the childrenʼs evaluations of their parentsʼ behavior will lead to a more realistic understanding of the parent-child relationship and provide more information to foster effective parenting attitude.

Conclusion
When we considered past levels of competitiveness in sports and parental support of physical activity as potential factors affecting parenting attitudes, the latter factor had an impact among both fathers and mothers, whereas the former factor was significant only among mothers.Parents should increase their emphasis on responsiveness when raising boys and on demandingness when raising girls to contribute to improvement in their parenting attitude.

Figure- 1 Figure- 2
Figure-1 Path analysis of the parental support (father)

Table - 1
Research subjects

Table - 2
Analysis of survey items related to Welkʼs four parental support factors b) Parental support of physical activityFor parental support of physical activity, two factors were extracted (Table

Table - 3
Analysis of survey items regarding Baumrindʼs two factors of parental support of physical activity