SAN DIEGO (Reuters Health) - Parental support can be a determining factor in whether girls become healthy young athletes or couch potatoes, according to a new report.

"Both mothers and fathers are important in promoting physical activity in girls," said study author Kirsten Davison, a researcher at Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania. "Having one parent who does this is great. Having two parents is better still."

In a study of 182 9-year-old girls and their parents, researchers found above-average levels of physical activity among 70% of girls in families where both parents promoted physical activity by practices such as using sports as a form of family recreation, enrolling their daughters in sports or lessons, attending sporting events with their daughters or driving them to and from practice.

By comparison, above-average physical activity levels were found among 56% of girls in families where one parent engaged in such practices and just 32% of girls in families in which neither parent did, Davison reported here Sunday at a nutrition conference organized by the American Society for Clinical Nutrition and other medical groups.

"Girls had the highest levels of activity when both parents reported high levels of overall support and encouragement," she told Reuters Health.

The findings are important, she said, because girls tend to be less physically active than boys and the gap widens as they approach puberty, putting them at risk for obesity and related health problems as they age.

Girls may be less interested in physical activities than boys because they have fewer same-sex role models in the sports world, Davison suggested.

But an encouraging nudge by their parents may be all the girls need to get them on the path to fitness, she said.

In general, the study showed that mothers were often the organizers who enrolled the girls in sports and shuttled them to and from practice while the fathers were more likely to be physically active and to promote fitness within the family.

"The mothers tended to provide high levels of logistical support and the fathers tended to exhibit modeling behavior," Davison said.

Both roles were important in getting the girls interested in and involved with physical activity, Davison said. Parental support also led the girls to have more positive attitudes about physical activity and to choose it over more sedentary activities like watching television, she noted.

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