Contexto familiar e atividade física de adolescentes: cotejando diferenças

Abstract

Introduction: Family context plays an important role with regard to the physical activity (PA) of adolescents. Intense changes in family composition, including an increase of single-parent structures can affect behavior. Objective: To estimate the prevalence of PA, between boys and girls of 11-17 years old, and investigate its association with family context variables. Methods: A cross-sectional population-based study "The BH Health Study" was conducted in two health districts of Belo Horizonte. The outcome was PA (≥ 300 minutes/week), which was created from a score that combined time and frequency of cycling and walking to school and leisure time. The independent variables were family context, sociodemographic characteristics and nutritional status. Poisson regression was used with a robust variance and was stratified by gender. Results: 1,015 adolescents participated, 52.8% of whom were male, with a mean age of 14 (± 1.9) years old. The prevalence of PA was 38.8% for girls and 54.5% for boys. Among girls, the family context variables were not significantly associated with PA. Boys were more active when there was an adult in the household reported who did PA (PR = 1.26; 95%CI 1.02 -1.55) and when living with a single mother (PR = 1.63; 95%CI 1.01 -2.63). It was also observed that boys that live with their mother and father (PR=1.90; 95%CI 1.06 -3.41) or only with their mother (PR = 1.82; 95%CI 1.01 -3.27) reported did PA more frequently in their free time. Conclusion: The presence of an active adult in the household, mainly the mother, appears to be an important factor associated with boys' PA.

Sociocultural factors related to the physical activity in boys and girls

“…The presence of the mother or father at home (at the p-value limit of 0.058) was associated with regular practice of PA by girls. The influence of family composition on PA had already been demonstrated in another study 9 . In a stratified analysis (data not shown), we found a greater leisure PA in girls who lived with mother or father (PR = 1.08; 95%CI 1.03–1.14) compared to those who do not have parents at home (PR = 1.07; 95%CI 1.02–1.12).…”

“…Adolescents who did at least 60 minutes of PA in five days or more were considered active. This variable was categorized as insufficiently active (< 300 min/week) and active (≥ 300 min/week) 4 , 8 , 9 .…”

“…Explanatory variables included in the study were grouped, by affinity, into four fields 6 . In the demographic field, the following variables were evaluated: age group (≤ 13; 14; 15; ≥ 16 years), skin color (white; black; yellow; brown; indigenous) 8 , kind of school (private; public) 8 , current adolescent work (yes; no) 8 , mother's schooling (without schooling; incomplete or complete elementary education; incomplete or complete secondary education; incomplete or complete higher education) 12 , living with parents (live with the mother and the father; only with the father; only with the mother; do not live with father or mother) 9 .…”

“…Certain demographic characteristics of the adolescent, such as being male, with a lower age group and a mother with a higher educational level, are already well established in the literature and associated with regular practice of PA 5 , 7 , 8 . A study demonstrates that family composition interferes in the level of PA of adolescents, but differently in boys and girls 9 . The importance of health-related behaviors in the practice of PA is also highlighted.…”

A prática de atividade física mediada pelo meio geográfico: a distância entre as moradias e as instalações

“…Neste estudo, para o conjunto da amostra foram encontradas mais mulheres ativas do que homens. Essa é uma constatação curiosa, considerando que os estudos tendem a mostrar as mulheres menos ativas do que os homens, independentemente da idade e do local da moradia das pessoas (LEE, 2005;RAMOSI et al, 2017;MARTINS et al, 2018). Esta assimetria entre os sexos pode ser explicada, em parte, pela infraestrutura dos espaços preparada para receber marchadores.…”