“Let them …” permissive parenting and active school travel

The complexity of factors influencing active school travel (AST) remains an ongoing research challenge, despite its well-recognised benefits and prominence as a research focus. Distance, and its interaction with factors such as age and gender, are known determinants, as is access to safe infrastructure for walking and cycling. However, parents are the gatekeepers of children’s travel modes, and their routines, attitudes and preferences will logically also shape AST uptake. To gain deeper insight into this influence, this paper has a specific focus on parenting attitudes and demonstrates how they shape children’s engagement with AST.Our central hypothesis is that travel distance, as the key deterrent to AST, exhibits varying levels of disutility across population subgroups. In this case, we proposed that families with parents who grant greater child independence will have children who perceive less disutility from travel distance, making them less discouraged by longer journeys. We test this hypothesis by applying an integrated choice and latent variable (ICLV) model to data on the travel, recreational, sleeping and eating patterns of 6,201 students aged 5-17 in New South Wales, Australia. The model incorporated a latent variable, “permissive parenting,” which is characterised by behaviours such as unrestricted screen time and access to snack food. This latent construct is combined with demographic factors to examine AST, with particular attention to variations in travel distance perception.The findings reveal significant variations in, probability of AST, and distance perception. Among students living within 1 km of school, the likelihood of using active school travel (AST) is approximately 15% for those with non-permissive parents, compared to about 90% for those with fully permissive parents. These findings reveal the value of incorporating considerations of styles of parenting in assessing children’s school mode choices. They suggest that attempts to plan for and promote AST through built environment and child-based programs alone are misguided.