Mom's Feeding Practices Tied to Childhood Obesity
CINCINNATI -- Childhood obesity may have a lot to do with specific beliefs and feeding practices of mothers -- many of which have been passed on by their own mothers and go against the advice of their nutritionists and physicians.
Researchers at Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati interviewed groups of mothers about their feeding practices. Their study found that these mothers:
- Believe it's better to have a heavy infant because infant weight is the best marker of child health and successful parenting;
- Fear that their infants are not getting enough to eat, which leads them to introduce rice cereal and other solid foods before the recommended ages;
- Use food to shape their children's behavior, such as rewarding good behavior or to calm fussiness.
"Parents who use food to satisfy their children's emotional needs or to promote good behavior in their children may promote obesity by interfering with their children's ability to regulate their own food intake," says Amy Baughcum, the study's main author and a researcher in the General and Community Pediatrics Division. Baughcum works in the research center of Robert Whitaker, M.D., M.P.H., an internationally known authority on childhood obesity at Cincinnati Children's.
"Physicians and other health professionals discussing childhood growth with mothers should avoid implying that infant weight is necessarily a measure of child health or parental competence," says Baughcum. "Practitioners might also include grandmothers in educational efforts to change child feeding practices."
The study involved four focus groups, one involving dieticians from a Supplemental Nutrition Program for Woman, Infants and Children (WIC), and three involving mothers with children enrolled in WIC. These focus groups included a total of 15 WIC dieticians and 14 mothers. The mothers were 14- to 34-years-old, with children 12- to 36-months-old enrolled in WIC.
The study focused on the child-feeding practices of low-income mothers because obesity disproportionately affects low-income women, and maternal obesity is a major risk factor for childhood obesity, according to Baughcum.
The study is published in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Other authors include Dr. Whitaker, Kathleen Burklow, Ph.D., and Scott Powers, Ph.D., both psychologists at Cincinnati Children's, and Cindy Deeks, M. Ed., R.D., a research dietician in Cincinnati Children's Clinical Research Center.
Contact Information
Jim Feuer,
jfeuer@chmcc.org
