Why/How do parents let their children get overweight?
Granted it's not my place to judge but it bothers me when I see an overweight parent walking with an overweight child. I feel bad for the child. Why and how does a parent allow this?
you're going to get that "oh , it genetics answer" from someone but it's a lot of bull. to me the reason is that it's easy. what i mean by that is that it's easy to keep your kid occupied by feeding them. it's easy to keep your kid occupied by letting them sit around watching tv. it's easy to let your kid play video games for hours each day. what isn't as easy for some is to get outside with your kid and play. it isn't as easy to make them something healthy to eat as it is to just hand them pre-made junk food. it's called laziness and it sucks.
Sitting them down in front of the telly with an oversized plate full of junk food.
Definately some issues are parents not setting limits on food intake, allowing their children to be stationary, not encouraging outside play or extracurricular activities. Parents often reward their children with food and food becomes associated with pleasure, fun, positive.
It IS difficult to judge, however. There are many medications that cause weight gain, and if a child is on any of these medications, weight gain is inevitable and this can cause the child embarrassment. Meds like cancer drugs, some psychotropic meds, and quite a few more. So though it's often difficult, we have to be careful not to automatically assume anything.
What you see is what you get. The child sees what his parents does, he follows and he gets them too. Parents eat junk food and unhealthy diet, kids follow them because kids are innocent human being. Adults who don't think overweight is a big issue just shrug off the negative looks from outsiders and walk proudly. Problem with adults are they are stubborn, selfish, ignorant and set a bad example to the poor kids.
The answers to this are complex. Becoming overweight is nearly 100% related to insulin and insulin resistance with the number of calories being of negligible effect in real-world scenarios.
In short, kids get fat the the same reasons that adults do. They eat too many carbs and boost their blood sugar levels. The body responds by releasing insulin into the blood to address the glucose situation (as glucose is toxic in it free-floating form in large amounts) and insulin works to bring blood sugar levels down by shuttling the glucose into the cells.
Of course, free glucose in the cells is not any less toxic, so the cells begin to close the "windows" through which the insulin inserts the blood sugar. This is known as insulin resistance.
When this happens, the cells in the body which will get this overload of sugar will be the ones that are LEAST prone to closing these insulin-windows, the ones that are the LEAST insulin resistant. Can you guess which cells these are?
The fat cells of course.
Once insulin resistance has been realized, the body will begin racking up fat quickly. Children of insulin resistant (fat) parents are even more at risk. Why? Because in the womb the baby is exposed to the mother's blood sugar landscape. Since the blood sugar is high for the mother, the baby responds by quickly developing and abundance of insulin-producing cells in its pancreas in the womb. The result is that the kid in these circumstances is born ready to pump out LOTS of insulin and is more able to quickly develop insulin resistance of his own unless carb intake is severely restrcited.
Of course, many of these people come from families on the lower income levels who tend to feast on cheap, carb-saturated foods like pizza, cereal, and McDonald's instead of steak and salad for every meal.
The result is this. Mom is fat because she's poor or ignorant (i.e. she doesn't know that calories alone don't make one fat but the consumption of carbs does) and so she has a bad womb enviornment for her kid who is predisposed to becoming fat once s/he's born and then is pidgeon-holed into becoming fat because of the food that is provided while growing - cheap food.
Some parents don't have, or know (or care) about healthier eating habits; but I think it can be more complicated than that.
My own (now grown) kids were always very slender kids (so I don't have personal reasons for wanting to defend parents of heavy children). I've known mothers, though, who have children who want to/need to eat some things (or amounts), no matter how much the mother knows it isn't "the greatest thing".
I can't help but think that, at least with a lot of kids, some of the overeating may be caused by stress (either at home, at school, within them for some reason, etc.); because people who are stressed will crave high-carbohydrate/high-fat foods. When that happens, the person feels as if he can't function, and doesn't have any energy at all, unless he gives into the craving.
Most of the time it is the parent's fault for allowing the child to overeat... however there are times when a child does have thyroid problems or health issues that cause them to be overweight. I know of one little girl who gained 60 pounds on a medication. This child was small beforehand...but gained it quickly in a few months! So it's not always the parents fault. Sometimes it is!
what if the parent is thin or average and the child is overweight?does it still bother you?
by Roberta McIlroy 12 years ago
Why do only some people get a beer belly?I have met people in the last two decades that are borderline alcoholics, or as they say, recurring drunks. Some of them have a beer belly while others don't. Can anyone tell me why?
by 05Jamie 15 years ago
This is somthing I feel strongly about there is no excuse for parents to have an overweight child !
by Sherri 10 years ago
Equipment for testing blood sugar levels. Diabetes. What is your experience with using the...products on the market that are available to monitor blood sugar levels? Are these devices easy to use, complicated? Do they come with instructions that are easy to understand? How are they delivered? By...
by Robuck4 12 years ago
If you have Diabetes, what is your formula for keeping your blood sugar under control?What medications are you on?
by Nithya Venkat 13 years ago
What causes Polycystic Ovaries ?Does excess insulin in the body cause PCOsorDoes PCOs cause excess insulin in the body?Or are there any other reason??
by Catherine Kane 13 years ago
Are diabetic blood sugar levels higher when you're dehydrated?I've noticed that, when I first get up in the morning, my blood sugar levels are higher then they are at other times of the day. This doesn't make sense, as I haven't been eating at all while I'm sleeping. Are my levels higher because I...
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |