Competing interests: selleck inhibitor None. Ethics approval: The Ethics Committee of the National Hospital Organization Tochigi Medical Center, Tochigi, Japan. Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed. Data sharing statement: Extra data
can be accessed via the Dryad data repository at http://datadryad.org/ with the doi:10.5061/dryad.sg83p.
While there is growing evidence of the superior effectiveness of lifestyle interventions initiated early in childhood,1–3 one of the main barriers in conducting such interventions is parents’ lack of recognition of, or concern about, obesity in children. Parents’ difficulties in perceiving children’s body sizes accurately have been demonstrated since the early 2000s, across many countries, cultures and child ages.4–6 A recent study of over 16 000 children aged 2–9 years from eight European countries has shown that, among parents of overweight
children, 63% perceived their children’s weights as ‘proper’, independent of educational level.7 Moreover, a meta-analysis of 69 studies on parental perceptions of children’s body weights showed that half of the parents underestimated their children’s weight.8 Most studies have applied a quantitative approach to describe parents’ miscategorisation of children’s weight status; however, the underlying factors have not been identified conclusively.6 To date, only two studies9 10 have used in-depth interviews to examine how parents make sense of children’s body weights and their health implications.
In their study of low-income mothers, Jain et al9 have shown that most mothers did not worry about their children’s body weights if the children were active and socially accepted; the mothers, moreover, distrusted paediatric growth charts, and attributed childhood obesity to genetics, rather than to factors modifiable in the home environment. Misinterpretation of growth charts was also highlighted by Rich et al,10 who found that 80% of parents perceived their child as healthy although the child’s weight was at the 95th centile. These parents, notably, were aware of obesity-related health risks. More recently, focus groups revealed Anacetrapib that, in assessing their children’s body sizes, parents tend not to rely on clinical measurements; rather, they often compare their children visually to other children, whose body sizes can be defined as extreme, thus skewing their perceptions of what a healthy body size is.11 So far, existing research on parental perceptions of children’s body weights has focused almost exclusively on mothers, and has not examined the critical influence of other family members, such as fathers and grandparents.12 Since family-based interventions have been proposed as the most effective approach to treating child obesity13 14 knowledge about how other adult caretakers perceive and discuss young children’s body weights will contribute to understanding familial barriers to treatment.