Parental weight changes as key predictors of child weight changes

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Chu-Yung Liao¹  Helen Andriani²  Hsien-Wen Kuo³ 

[1] Department of Early Childhood Educare, College of Health, Chung Chou University of Science and Technology, Changhua, Taiwan;International Health Program, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan;International Health Program, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan;Institute of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan;School of Public Health, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan;

关键词: Weight Change;    Maternal Employment;    Obese Status;    Overweight Status;    Parental Weight;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-015-2005-x

 received in 2015-02-05, accepted in 2015-06-30,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundParents are the key agents of behavioural changes in their children. This fact is as an important aspect of obesity treatment and prevention. The present study aims to evaluate the influence of parents who have gained or lost weight on their children’s weights and to examine parental and child patterns of weight changes from a baseline over a 14-year duration.MethodsWe performed a secondary analysis on the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS), an ongoing national prospective longitudinal cohort study in Indonesia. Height and weight measurements, information regarding parental education, maternal employment, household income, and residence were collected from children under five years old (n = 3,147) and their parents in 1993. Data were taken from the same individuals at different points in time, in 1997, 2000, and 2007.ResultsDuring each transition, the children of parents who gained weight had a significantly weights than did children of parents who lost weight. A mother’s positive weight change increased the chance of her pre-schooler’s or school-aged child’s positive weight change. However we found no such association between a father’s positive weight change and his child’s positive weight change.ConclusionsParental weight change is an independent predictor of child weight change. Positive weight change in the mother had a more dominant influence than did the father’s positive weight change. Future family-based obesity prevention and treatment programs should consider how best to include and engage mothers as a catalyst for the reduction of obesity-related risk factors in the long term.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Andriani et al. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.