Congratulations to Dr. Richard Larouche and Dr. Mark S Tremblay on their recent publication ‘“Out and about”: relationships between children’s independent mobility and mental health in a national longitudinal study‘ published in Children’s Geographies! The abstract and citation are below.
Abstract:
Children’s independent mobility (CIM) represents their freedom to travel in their neighborhood without adult supervision. Secular declines in CIM coincided with a major increase in mental health problems among children. We investigated relationships between two indicators of CIM and parent-perceived child distress in a national longitudinal study involving 2,291 Canadian parents of 7- to 12-year-olds at baseline (December 2020) with up to four follow-ups, every six months. We assessed mobility licenses (i.e. children’s permission to do certain activities on their own) with 6 items, and home range (i.e. how far [in minutes] children can roam with friends and/or siblings) with a 4-point item. We used generalized estimating equations controlling for children’s age and gender, household income, study wave, school attendance, and COVID-19 isolation in the week preceding the survey. At each successive time point, 51.8%, 44.0%, 43.2% and 42.4% of children experienced clinically elevated distress. Compared to children allowed to roam <5 min, children allowed to roam 5–15 min (OR = 0.76; 95% CI: 0.67–0.88) or >15-minutes (OR = 0.61; 95% CI: 0.51–0.72) had lower odds of elevated distress. However, CIM licenses were not associated with distress. Our findings underscore the need to support extending children’s home range.
Citation
Larouche R, Faulkner G, Bélanger M, Brussoni M, Grunnel K, Tremblay MS. “Out and about”: relationships between children’s independent mobility and mental health in a national longitudinal study. Child. Geogr. 2024;22(6):860-870. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2024.2397734
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