Parental travel behaviours, accompaniment, and children’s active transportation: A multi-site study

Children who engage in active transportation (AT) to and from school are more physically active than those who use motorized travel modes. We investigated whether parents' travel mode to school as a child, current travel mode to work, and parental accompaniment on the trip home from school are associated with their children's AT to/from multiple destinations. Grade 4–6 children (n = 1699, 55% girls) were recruited from urban, suburban, and rural schools in the regions of Vancouver, Ottawa and Trois-Rivières, Canada. Parents reported their current travel mode(s) to work, school travel mode as a child, and how many days they accompanied their child home from school. Children reported the number of active trips to/from various destinations they took over 7 consecutive days. Multiple imputation was performed to replace missing data. Generalized linear mixed models based on a negative binomial distribution were used to investigate predictors of AT. Models were stratified by gender and adjusted for child age, parent respondent's gender, level of urbanization, and school-area socioeconomic status. For each day a parent accompanied their child home from school, girls participated in 6% less active trips (95% CI 0.91–0.97) while boys had 7% less active trips (95% CI 0.90–0.96). Boys living in Vancouver and Trois-Rivières had respectively 55% (95% CI 1.13–2.04) and 33% (95% CI 1.00–1.77) more active trips compared to Ottawa. Parent's work travel mode and school travel mode as a child were not independently associated with their child's number of AT trips. Children may have more opportunities for AT if their parents allow them to come home from school unaccompanied. These findings underscore the need for promoting children's independent mobility. • We examined associations between parents' and children's travel behaviours. • We assessed children's active transportation to/from school and many other places. • Parental accompaniment from school to home was associated with fewer active trips. • Parents' travel mode was not associated with their child's number of active trips. • Findings highlight a need for policies and programs to support independent mobility.