I Became a Parent – What Happened to My Activity?
A rather blunt conclusion reached in a 2008 review of parenthood and inactivity which should have caught the attention of all parents, was:
“Parents with dependent children are clearly more inactive than non-parents and the topic has received disproportionately scant research considering the size of the effect.
Subjectively, as parents, we may feel that this conclusion is simply a formality about something we had already noticed. To a parent this seems a case of stating the obvious – we know what our activity was like before kids, and have observed the sustained activity patterns of non-parents in our social circles.
But there’s the point – we noticed, but what did we then do about it?
Did we swing into action and plan out strategies for long term physical health? Did we create deliberate active habits and then continue to prioritise and work on these habits? Did we have any idea of actually how to take action? Maybe we did. Did the routine or habit stick, or did it fall to the wayside (again)? Did any of the activity momentum you built endure, or was your personal health frequently put aside to cope as a parent?
Did we defer any action in the hope our bodies would hold out through this ‘phase’ of life? Did we assume that we’d have time later, or that as the kids get more active we will too? Or did we create a habit of inactivity and become a spectator rather than a participant in our kids’ activity?
Whether you tried and stumbled in becoming an active parent, or whether you deferred your health maintenance as a gamble on future opportunities, the bottom line is this:
Inactivity is clearly identified as a global health problem, a national health problem, and a local health problem. For individuals – parents in particular – the effects of inactivity have an enormous impact on their mental health, their family’s health, and the quality of future participation with their family.
ReRunMe’s purpose is to help you take action to become and sustain being an active parent.
Reference:
Bellows-Riecken, Kai & Rhodes, Ryan. (2008). A birth of inactivity? A review of physical activity and parenthood. Preventive medicine. 46. 99-110. 10.1016/j.ypmed.2007.08.003.
