Challenges encountered by parents from urban, lower social economic class in changing lifestyle behaviors of their children who are overweight or obese

BMC Pediatrics

Research

Paul B Rukavina¹  Weidong Li²  Xiao Ma³ 

[1] Adelphi University, Woodruff hall, 1 South Avenue, Garden City, NY, USA;College of Education & Human Ecology, Department of Human Sciences, The Ohio State University, PAES Building A270 305 Annie and John Glenn Avenue, 43210-1224, Columbus, OH, USA;Institute of Sport Sciences, Shanghai University of Sport, Changhai Road 399, 200438, Shanghai, P.R. China;

关键词: Obesity;    Parental perceptions;    Lifestyle behaviors;    Urban;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12887-023-04295-5

 received in 2023-01-01, accepted in 2023-09-06,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundParents from urban, lower social economic classes often encounter unique challenges in their lives, which shape how they work with their children who are overweight or obese to change their exercise and eating behaviors at home. The present study took an initial step to address a gap in the literature by describing the challenges that parents from lower social economic classes in an urban city encountered in changing exercise and eating behaviors of their children who are overweight or obese.MethodsA conversational style semi-structured interview with prompts and probes was conducted to 44 parents whose child is overweight or obese. Inductive content analysis and constant comparison was used to analyze the data. Data trustworthiness was established by using a variety of strategies.ResultsTwo major themes with eight sub-themes emerged from the data: Challenges to promote a healthy active lifestyle, and challenges from their child’s development and lifestyle behavior. Eight sub-themes were: (1) Need for effective strategies for a lifestyle behavior change, (2) monitor and promote healthy choices, (3) money, time, and dangerous neighborhood, (4) scientific knowledge to promote a healthy active lifestyle, (5) developmental changes of adolescence, (6) unmotivated and lack of persistence, (7) sneaking eating, and (8) peer pressure.ConclusionThe challenges, from economic to parenting, are certainly of importance, and understanding these challenges will be crucial to help school-based professionals develop interventions. Those identified challenges should be clearly placed within family-school collaboration practices.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2023