Parents ‘not at fault if children obese’

HAVING an obese child doesn’t make one an unfit parent.

Nor does failing at helping that child control his or her weight, so long as you try to help.

Those are some of the conclusions drawn by a group of child-health experts whose paper appears at bmj.com, the online British Medical Journal.

The finding will come as a relief to the tens of thousands of Irish parents with overweight children.

Recent studies show that more than 300,000 children are overweight or obese. One in 10 children in Ireland aged five to 12 years are obese, and it is a leading risk factor of the development of heart disease and cancer in later life.

Ireland has one of the highest rates of childhood obesity in the world, according to Hilary Hoey, professor Paediatrics at Trinity College Dublin.

“It is well established that children who are obese are at a higher risk of developing cardiovascular, metabolic and musculoskeletal complications. Furthermore, children who are obese are more likely to be obese in adulthood.”

The BMJ group set out to devise guidelines to help medical professionals evaluate circumstances surrounding young patients’ obesity, with an eye toward detecting parental neglect.

“It is but a short step from seeing parents as agents of change to blaming them for their child’s obesity,” say the authors of the report.

“Childhood obesity can be seen as a failure to adequately care for your children by failing to provide a healthy diet and sufficient activity, whether through direct neglect or more subtly through an inability to deny children the pleasures of energy dense fast food and television viewing. This is particularly the case when children have become morbidly obese and have potentially life threatening complications of obesity.”

Because the etiology of childhood obesity is complex and can be complicated by issues related to sexual and other forms of abuse, the authors write, it is inappropriate to blame parents for their children being obese or for their remaining that way despite efforts to help them lose weight.

Also, the authors suggest, “As obesity remains extremely difficult for professionals to treat, it is untenable to criticise parents for failing to treat it successfully if they engage adequately with treatment.”

But consistently failing to seek or take advantage of opportunities and resources to help a child achieve a healthful weight may constitute a form of neglect, the authors say – and that neglect could warrant placing a child in foster care.