Exercise is contagious - at least in the family. A study published on Tuesday using Swiss data shows that if parents are physically active, their children also tend to be more active.
06.01.2026, 11:29
SDA
The researchers from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) analyzed physical activity data from several hundred parent-child pairs in Switzerland. Over several days, children and parents wore movement sensors that recorded how much time they spent sitting, being slightly active or moving more intensively.
The result: if parents changed their exercise behavior, the children followed this pattern. However, the effect was significantly weaker in the children. Specifically, the change in the child was around 18 times less when it came to the mother's behavior and around 29 times less when it came to the father's behavior.
The influence remained visible over several years: even five years after the first measurement, children whose parents were less sedentary in everyday life were more active overall. There was a similar trend for fathers, although this was not statistically clear.
Many children move too little
The researchers conclude that parents play an important role as role models - even if their behavior is not transferred one-to-one to their children. Measures that motivate parents to move more and sit less in everyday life could therefore benefit the whole family.
Although Switzerland is one of the most active countries in Europe, many children and adolescents do not achieve the recommendation of at least 60 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per day, as Swiss TPH emphasized in a press release on the study on Tuesday. "The early promotion of an active lifestyle therefore remains a central task of health policy," the institute continued.
The data comes from the Sophya cohort study. Between 2013 and 2015 and again between 2019 and 2020, physical activity data was collected in Switzerland from children and adolescents aged 6 to 16 and their parents. The study was published in the "Journal of Activity, Sedentary and Sleep Behaviors".
