Family correlates of physical activity and parent-rated motor competence in preschool children from a socioecological perspective: a cross-sectional analysis of 10,967 children in China

Family correlates of preschool children’s physical activity (PA) and motor competence are seldom compared within a single adjusted model. We designed and conducted a national household survey across all 31 province-level divisions of China in 2020 using three-stage probability-proportional-to-size sampling and included 10,967 children aged 3–6 years. Caregivers reported parental support, parenting orientation, exercise, screen time, co-activity, parental obesity, home sport equipment, neighborhood environment, and child temperament, together with daily PA and parent-rated motor competence. Parental support combined attitudes and enacted support in a six-item scale (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.76). Survey-weighted regressions with county sampling units nested in province strata estimated semistandardized associations. A cross-sectional decomposition used the percentile bootstrap resampling of sampling units; multiple imputation and inverse-probability weighting were used to assess missing-data sensitivity. Parental support was associated with parent-rated motor competence (0.32 points per standard deviation [SD], 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.26–0.38). With two items overlapping co-activity removed, this estimate was 0.22 (0.17–0.28), and contrasts with sociability and equipment no longer excluded zero. Child sociability, home sport equipment, and caregiver co-activity were associated with PA (8.3, 8.0, and 5.9 min/day per SD). In the decomposition, 40 percent of the support–PA association was statistically accounted for by home equipment, co-activity, and maternal exercise; the majority of the support–competence association was not accounted for by these behaviors. Parental obesity was not associated with either outcome. These results describe adjusted associations conditional on the measures and covariates used and identify family and child characteristics for further study with independently assessed outcomes.