by Louise-Anne Geddes, Mindful Mum, 19th January 2012

The study was led by Dr Emily Freeman from the Family Action Centre at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.  The objective of the study was to ‘examine the long-term effects of having one overweight or obese parent on child weight status and determine whether these effects vary according to parent sex’.

Research and findings

The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children examined data from two parent families if height and weight data were available for both parents and the child in 2004 and 2008.  Child weight status (healthy, overweight or obese) in 2008 was compared with self reported parent weight status in 2004 to investigate how this influenced the child’s weight four years later.

Parent body mass index (BMI) was ‘significantly correlated’ with child BMI, but there was no evidence of sex-specific associations between parent and child BMI correlations. The results showed that having an overweight or obese father, but a healthy weight mother, significantly increased the odds of child obesity.

Conclusions

The researchers concluded that:

“Children with overweight or obese fathers are at a higher risk of becoming obese. This suggests that interventions are urgently required to test the efficacy of treating overweight fathers as a key strategy for childhood obesity prevention and/or treatment”.

Source:
International Journal of Obesity, Preventing and treating childhood obesity: time to target fathers,18 January 2012

Photography: Tony Alter @Flickr