How Important is Parenting for the Development of Children's Overweight and Obesity?

• In Event: 2-135 - The Role of Parenting and Emotion in Pediatric Obesity Risk

Integrative Statement

Parenting has been suggested to be an important determinant of children’s overweight and obesity. For example, parental feeding practices have been found to be associated with children’s body mass index (BMI). But although it has been generally assumed that parental feeding determines children’s eating behaviors and weight gain, some longitudinal data suggest that feeding practices such as food restriction or pressure to eat could also be considered parental responses to child (over-)weight and maybe more likely so than the reverse. The current presentation aims at delineating the role of parenting in the development of children’s overweight and obesity in a large longitudinal cohort of typical, non-clinical families followed from 6 months before birth to 10 years of age. On this cohort, Generation R, nearly 100 papers have been published on various predictors, correlates and consequences of overweight and obesity, ranging from (epi-)genetics to parental overweight, psychosocial stress, and parenting style in general and around children’s food intake. Also socioeconomic factors have been studied and child characteristics such as activity level, sleeping patterns, food preferences and experiences of bullying and other stressors have been examined. Furthermore, potential consequences of obesity for child behavior problems and (cardiovascular) health have been reported upon. The main question to be addressed here is how important parenting is for the development of overweight and obesity taking into account the myriad of other predictors that also might play an important role. What part of the variance in children’s overweight and obesity can be predicted by genetics, child characteristics, socioeconomic background, and (prenatal) parenting? We will present an integrative model of overweight/ obesity in which the predictive value of parenting is compared with that of various other potentially relevant variables. Because of its multidisciplinary design Generation R is well-equipped for an in-depth study of a large variety of antecedents and consequences of obesity. The Generation R study is a population-based prospective birth cohort situated in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. All pregnant women living in Rotterdam with an expected delivery date between April 2002 and January 2006 were invited (participation rate: 61%). Full consent for the postnatal phase was obtained for 7295 children and their parents (73,7% of those originally enrolled). Children’s BMI and body composition have been assessed at several times across the first 10 years in almost 3,500 children with complete data, and developmental trajectories have been established.
Despite the abundance of Generation R findings on childhood obesity, the available evidence on different etiological factors is scattered, even within a single, multidisciplinary cohort study like Generation R. Thus, an integration of the available evidence is needed to gain insight into the relative contribution of each of these predictive factors. A quantitative synthesis of studies reported on the Generation R cohort will provide the evidence base for an integrative model of obesity development.

Authors

• Marinus H van IJzendoorn, Erasmus University Rotterdam
  Presenting Author

• Pauline Jansen, Erasmus MC-University Medical Center Rotterdam, The Netherlands
  Non-Presenting Author