Fat kids, silent parents
Hectored by experts and afraid of hurting their kids' self-esteem, parents of overweight children remain silent -- as the nation faces a youthful obesity crisis.
By Amy Benfer
March 25, 2002 | Americans have a peculiar national lunacy: The more we valorize thinness, the fatter we actually become. On the one hand, we continue to lament to the point of cliché the endless parade of predictably emaciated models and actresses whom we fear will poison girls and women with an unhealthy vision of beauty. Meanwhile, the surgeon general is telling American parents, in increasingly ominous tones, that the real problem with our children -- of both genders -- is not that they are too thin, but that they are too fat, so fat, in fact, that failure to intervene will result in an "Armageddon" (yes, they use that word) of heart disease, diabetes and all the other psychological and physiological problems that accompany obesity.
A variety of factors have contributed to the country's ballooning weight -- poverty, inactivity, poor nutritional education, lard-rich fast food. A disproportionate number of overweight children continue to come from lower-income families. But as issues of obesity invade middle-class homes, parents who are versed in the four basic food groups and have the money to provide healthy meals are tongue-tied by a new conundrum: Having done their perfect-parent best to protect their children, in particular their daughters, from the dangers of eating disorders and self-loathing, they have ended up with a generation of fat children (not to mention adults) who now need to lose weight. But as they prepare themselves to finally confront their children about their weight, they find themselves bound and gagged -- deprived by the experts of appropriate language for the task.
As any parent who has even dipped into parenting manuals knows, it is absolutely against the rules to call extra attention to a child's eating habits, even when they are toddlers, for fear of creating "lifelong issues" with food and irreparable harm to self-esteem. So how exactly do we coerce a dangerously overweight child to slim down, without mentioning the cause of obesity, or even the subject of weight?
Many pediatricians and so-called "feeding experts" cling to the notion that it is worse for a child to be shamed by the mention of weight than to be burdened with excessive fat. Faced with alarming statistics about childhood obesity, these advisors bob and weave, suggesting that the topic be broached in surreptitious ways, insisting that parents must still avoid making direct comments about weight or appearance. But an increasing number of parents, and a handful of experts, have begun to reorder their priorities, sacrificing the focus on self-esteem to make blunt comments about their child's weight -- to their children. Some have even decided that diets, long forbidden in the realm of pediatric advice, may be appropriate.
In the past, experts placed few constraints on parents dealing with an overweight child. In "The Kid-Slimming Book," a 1976 weight-loss guide for parents of overweight children, author Audrey Ellis writes: "Fat is not fit. Fat is not beautiful either. An overweight child may be teased, rejected as a playmate, and the object of hostility at school, however much he is cherished at home." Another book, from 1985, "Beyond Baby Fat" by Frances Sheritan Goulert, warns parents that fat children have more accidents in P.E., are involved in more pedestrian-automobile accidents and are more likely to burn themselves, because they move more "slowly" and are less "dextrous" than children of normal weight. Goulert also reports that a fat child has a 50 percent less chance of getting into college. And she is merciless in her definition of overweight: "If your offspring has rolls around her middle, an extra chin, or lumpy legs, she is fat -- period," she writes.
This brand of unapologetic parent-baiting is now politically incorrect and considered psychologically harmful. But is it medically called-for? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in March that the percentage of overweight children ages 6 to 11 increased from 11 percent to 13 percent between 1994 and 1999. For ages 12 to 19, the percentage jumped from 11 to 14 percent. And parents are hardly working out as role models: As many as 50 percent of American adults are overweight.
Worse news, perhaps, is the potential impact of the numbers. When it comes to body type, childhood provides a blueprint for the adult. In 1997, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that more than 50 percent of obese children over the age of 6 will continue to be obese into adulthood, and 70 to 80 percent of obese teenagers will remain obese as adults.
In other words, without early intervention by parents, fat children are very likely to grow into fat adults. And there is even more pressure when it comes to girls: Substantial weight gain in very young girls frequently triggers premature puberty -- as early 8 or 9 in some girls -- and puberty triggers additional weight gain. Once a girl begins to menstruate -- typically two years after the onset of puberty -- she soon reaches her full height, meaning that she can't "grow into" the weight she has already put on. (Testosterone may cause some fat to be exchanged for muscle in overweight boys, but it can't be counted upon.) In fact, children whose extra weight gain in childhood triggers premature puberty will often lose inches in height that they would otherwise have achieved.
Next page: We find ourselves in a conspiracy of silence surrounding children and weight