"Clean your plate or else!" and other authoritarian approaches
to parenting can lead to overweight children, a new study
finds.
Strict mothers were nearly five times more likely to raise
tubby first-graders than mothers who treated their children
with flexibility and respect while also setting clear rules.
But while the children of flexible rule-setting moms avoided
obesity, the children of neglectful mothers and permissive
mothers were twice as likely to get fat.
"The difference between the different parenting groups
is pretty striking," said the study co-author, Dr. Kay Rhee
of Boston University School of Medicine. The study of 872
families appears in the June issue of Pediatrics, released
Monday.
Rhee speculated that parents who show respect and warmth
within a framework of rules may help their children learn
to make good decisions about food and exercise. Or it could
be that strict parents create a stressful household where
overeating becomes a comfort and escape, she said.
Other studies have shown the flexible parenting style,
also called authoritative, has other good results for children
such as higher achievement in school and lower incidence
of depression, said John Lavigne, chief psychologist at
Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
Lavigne, who was not involved in the new study, said most
parents can learn a different way of handling their children.
"Some parents might have difficulty changing their style.
But a lot of other parents are very amenable to change,
if they only have the right kind of advice," Lavigne said.
Not enough fathers participated in the study to measure
their effects on children's weight, Rhee said. And since
more than 80 percent of the study participants were white,
the findings may not be applicable to other racial groups,
she said.
The study also did not take into account the weight status
of the mothers, so the researchers couldn't rule out that
a mother's weight might influence both her parenting and
her children's weight. However, a previous study showed
that parenting style is not linked to weight status, Rhee
said.
To determine parenting style for the new study, researchers
surveyed the mothers and observed them interacting with
their children when the kids were 4 years old. The children's
body mass indexes were measured later when the children
were in first grade.
Seventeen percent of the children of strict disciplinarians
were overweight compared to 9.9 percent of the children
of neglectful parents, 9.8 percent of the children of permissive
parents and 3.9 percent of the children of flexible rule-setters.
"Children need adults to set some limits and as the child
matures they need to learn responsibility and self-regulation
gradually," said Dr. Nancy Krebs, co-chair of the task force
on obesity for the American Academy of Pediatrics, who also
was not involved in the new study.
The researchers studied mothers and children in Little
Rock, Ark.; Irvine, Calif.; Lawrence, Kan.; Boston; Philadelphia;
Pittsburgh; Charlottesville, Va.; Morgantown, N.C.; Seattle,
and Madison, Wis.
In homes where parents are firm but flexible, "the rules
can be bent a little or modified a little to accommodate
the situation. But ultimately there are rules," Rhee said.
"You still maintain the rule that the child has to have
a vegetable at dinner, but the child gets to pick which
one and how much of it they eat."
