It is recommended by health specialists that elderly people take regular physical exercise, but some of them fail to do so. I believe that the increasing pressure from work of young parents and the lack of sports facilities accessible to elderly people can lead to this phenomenon. However, a change in modern working conditions among young parents and governmental investment in the installation of sports equipment can encourage them to do more physical activities.
The stressful working condition in modern society is accountable for the lack of physical activity among old people. It is acknowledged that young parents have demanding work schedules, and hiring nannies to look after their children or sending them to early childhood education services is expensive, so they may rely on grandparents for regular childcare. This reliance leads elderly grandparents to spend a substantial part of the day looking after their grandchildren, leaving less discretionary time for planned exercise. The decreased opportunities of exercising regularly means that their overall level of physical activity remains low, which can have a negative impact on their physical health.
Insufficient sports facilities available to old people also reduce the likelihood of doing physical exercise. In some regions, public parks are often designed for young children, where they are plenty of facilities installed such as slides, climbing frames and seesaws, while corresponding facilities for elderly people are not commonly seen there. Although there are gyms where people from all age groups can do exercise, they are not easily accessible for the ageing population possibly because they are far away from where they live. I reckon that old people are less likely to go there because of the long distance required for travelling. Therefore, without sufficient sports facilities and easy-to-reach sports arenas for old people, the opportunities for physical exercise are rare.
To address this issue, working parents need to achieve work-life balance so that they have sufficient time to look after their children. To achieve this, the government can enforce employment regulations to maintain a fixed working hours per day for employees, such as a maximum of 8 working hours each day. If parents had enough time to be spent with their children, grandparents then could be extricated from childcare responsibilities. Another proposal would be for the government to allocate more budgets to the construction of sports facilities in public areas and near community blocks. If there were easily accessible facilities for old people, they would be more likely to spend time outdoors doing physical exercise.
In conclusion, long working hours of young people and insufficient sports facilities are the major causes of elderly people not having enough physical activities. To combat this issue, the government can make some laws to achieve work-life balance in the labour market and also spend money on the installation of more sports facilities for older people.