« Republicans Stand By Their Man | Main | Coyote Dares Liberals to Denounce Child Pornography »

February 26, 2007

Inattentive Fathers and Obesity

My son offered up an interesting observation yesterday that I thought might make for good discussion here. He said all the boys he knew who were overweight also had fathers who were not an active part of their lives – that is, the boys either lived with their mothers only or their fathers spent no real time with them. On the other hand, he said, all of the kids he knew who were physically fit had fathers who spent a good deal of time with them, actually engaging in physical activity with them.

I did a quick Internet search to see whether research supported his observations and found this study by Texas A&M University. According to the study, "the amounts and quality of time parents spent with their children has a direct effect on children's rates of obesity." What really blew me away, however, was that researchers found "the amount of time a mother spent with her child, her work stress and her income level had a larger impact in lowering the child's risk of obesity than the father's time, work stress and income." Even more shocking, "the more time a mother spends with the child, the less likely that child is to be obese; conversely, the more time a father spends with a child, the more likely the child will be obese." How can that be?

Apparently, men eat more and eat less healthfully than women do, thereby setting a bad example for their kids.

So what about my son's observation? The key to his observation was that the physically fit boys' dads were actually engaging their sons on outdoor activities – skiing, snow boarding, hiking, fishing, and sports. The obese boys' dads were working long hours and leaving their sons with nothing to do but play video games and eat, or were not even present in the home, leaving all care and support of the boys to their overworked mothers.

The National Fatherhood Initiative has more on the link between fathers and childhood obesity. For instance, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth found that obese children are more likely to live in father-absent homes than are non-obese children. And two studies have found that obese children are less likely to report that their fathers were physically active than were non-obese children. And though I know this will drive some of our readers craxy, apparently, this determinant is not found for mothers.

Posted by Becky at February 26, 2007 11:44 AM