Dubious link between strict parenting and overweight kids

Those who did the study excerpted below admit that they left out a couple of important factors but they fail to mention the factor that REALLY explains their results

"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...

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..."

Sorry to mention it, but dumb people are more likely to get fat and dumb people tend to be more rigid and have more simplistic approaches to things. It's that nasty old IQ that we see at work again in the above study. You need to look at WHY some parents treat their children less flexibly. Too much to ask of many academics, sadly

Update:

I did not think it necessary to state the obvious above but perhaps I should: Fat parents tend to have fat children -- mainly for genetic reasons, though not entirely so. So dumb, fat, rigid parents will tend to have fat children -- which can arise solely from the genetics for fatness that are passed on, not anything at all that the parents do.

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