Parental neglect linked to child obesity

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- A parent who neglects a child due to preoccupation with his or her own problems may promote obesity in the child, a U.S. study found.

Lead author Dr. Robert Whitaker of Temple University in Philadelphia used data obtained from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a birth cohort study of 4,898 children born between 1998 and 2000 in 20 large U.S. cities. Parents answered questions on neglect such as not providing proper supervision, corporal punishment such as spanking and psychological aggression such as threatening to spank the child.

The study, published in Child Abuse & Neglect, found the odds of obesity were 50 percent greater in children who had experienced neglect -- after controlling for income, number of children, the mothers' race/ethnicity, education, marital status, body mass index, prenatal smoking, the children's sex and birth weight.

However, neither the frequency of corporal punishment nor psychological aggression was associated with an increased risk of obesity.

"Corporal punishment and psychological aggression are common discipline techniques resulting from a child's misbehavior, and the child may come to anticipate them as consequences of their misbehavior," Whitaker said in a statement. "In contrast, the child may not understand the cause of the neglect and the child might mistakenly feel at fault."