Stuck in a vicious circle of stress. Parental concerns and barriers to changing children's dietary and physical activity habits

•Parents are more commonly concerned about diet than physical activity.•Parental work–life stress affects family interplay negatively.•Family interplay is a barrier to change of children's diet and physical activity. Introduction: Dietary habits and physical activity are often the focus of obesity prevention programmes and involving parents in such programmes has proven to be effective. The aims of this study were to describe parents' concerns about their children's diet and physical activity habits and to describe barriers to change. Results: The study used archival data gathered unobtrusively in the form of memos taken after sessions of Motivational Interviewing as part of the parental support programme, A Healthy School Start. The 74 MI-sessions were conducted from October 2010 to April 2011 with either a mother or father or both, all with children in pre-school class. Thematic analysis was applied. Three themes were identified regarding children's dietary habits: amount of food consumed influenced by behaviour in the family, eating situations influenced by stressful everyday life and family interplay, and food choices influenced by stressful everyday life and family interplay. One theme appeared regarding physical activity: physical activity influenced by stressful everyday life and family interplay. Conclusion: Family interplay appears to be an important link between the work–life stress perceived by parents and less healthy food and physical activity habits in the home. Both lack of parental cooperation and negative parent–child interactions may act as barriers to healthy eating and physical activity and should be addressed in future intervention studies on health-related behaviours of children.