Children’s physical activity avoidance and parental stress during the COVID-19 pandemic: from the perspective of authoritarian parents

The relationship between parenting style and physical activity of children has been confirmed in previous studies. Studies show that strict parents may impose more restrictions on their children's physical activity.

The aim of this study was to avoid physical activity and parental stress during the COVID-19 pandemic: from the perspective of strict parents.

This research is descriptive and cross-sectional and correlational in terms of purpose, which was done using structural equation modeling method. The statistical population of this study is all parents of 7-12 years old children in Kerman city who are studying in elementary school in 2020. In this study, 271 parents of elementary school students responded to the research questionnaires. Stress, depression and anxiety questionnaires (Antony and et al., 1998) were used to collect the data. Data were collected using Smart PLS.3 software.

The results of the analysis showed that knowledge directly and indirectly through parental stress and severity rate on physical activity abstinence of children. The results showed that awareness through parental stress explained 40% of variance of abstinence from physical activity. Also, awareness through deterioration rate explains 30% of variance of abstinence from physical activity.
Stress and perceived risk can significantly affect authoritarian parents’ decision-making process. Parents with greater awareness and knowledge about COVID-19 reported more avoidance behavior.

Based on these results, it can be concluded that parental awareness through perceived deterioration and parental stress can affect the abstinence of physical activity in children. Therefore, evidence-based psychological interventions can have a moderating effect on parental stress and perceived severity of disease.