Dubious link between strict parenting and overweight kids

Those who did the study excerpted below admit that they left out a couple of important factors but they fail to mention the factor that REALLY explains their results

"Clean your plate or else!" and other authoritarian approaches to parenting can lead to overweight children, a new study finds. Strict mothers were nearly five times more likely to raise tubby first-graders than mothers who treated their children with flexibility and respect while also setting clear rules. But while the children of flexible rule-setting moms avoided obesity, the children of neglectful mothers and permissive mothers were twice as likely to get fat.

"The difference between the different parenting groups is pretty striking," said the study co-author, Dr. Kay Rhee of Boston University School of Medicine. The study of 872 families appears in the June issue of Pediatrics, released Monday. Rhee speculated that parents who show respect and warmth within a framework of rules may help their children learn to make good decisions about food and exercise. Or it could be that strict parents create a stressful household where overeating becomes a comfort and escape, she said...

Not enough fathers participated in the study to measure their effects on children's weight, Rhee said. And since more than 80 percent of the study participants were white, the findings may not be applicable to other racial groups, she said. The study also did not take into account the weight status of the mothers, so the researchers couldn't rule out that a mother's weight might influence both her parenting and her children's weight. However, a previous study showed that parenting style is not linked to weight status, Rhee said.

To determine parenting style for the new study, researchers surveyed the mothers and observed them interacting with their children when the kids were 4 years old. The children's body mass indexes were measured later when the children were in first grade..."

Sorry to mention it, but dumb people are more likely to get fat and dumb people tend to be more rigid and have more simplistic approaches to things. It's that nasty old IQ that we see at work again in the above study. You need to look at WHY some parents treat their children less flexibly. Too much to ask of many academics, sadly

Update:

I did not think it necessary to state the obvious above but perhaps I should: Fat parents tend to have fat children -- mainly for genetic reasons, though not entirely so. So dumb, fat, rigid parents will tend to have fat children -- which can arise solely from the genetics for fatness that are passed on, not anything at all that the parents do.

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ELSEWHERE

Taranto has another excellent takedown of the contemptible Andrew Sullivan. I like Taranto's sarcasm about the would-be bombers recently arrested in Canada too.

Wicked Thoughts has a good coverage -- or should I say uncoverage? -- of the naughty Mrs McCartney affair. Australian Politics is a bit colourful today too.

German bias again: "Members of the German media have tried and convicted American soldiers of alleged war crimes before they ever go to trial. The latest case involves an article featured on the homepage of ARD tagesschau, a large, state-sponsored news program... Ironically, the same ARD journalists who can't seem to stop screaming about the denial of judicial due process to Guantanamo inmates are not even willing to afford the same privilege to American soldiers, despite the fact that American soldiers stood guard for decades and guaranteed their freedom of speech during the Cold War. In the ARD world, Guantanamo terrorists are innocent until proven guilty, American soldiers guilty until proven innocent."

Good if it happens: "Immigrants to Britain who have refused to learn the English language should be required to do so, Gordon Brown said yesterday. The Chancellor said that immigrants should also gain an understanding of British history to learn the values of freedom, liberty and tolerance. "People who come into this country, who are part of our community, should play by the rules," he told the Today programme on Radio 4. "I think learning English is part of that. I think that understanding British history is part of that. That is why I want to see changes in the curriculum. "I would insist on large numbers of people who have refused to learn our language that they must do so. If someone is unemployed, who does not speak English, they should have to learn English to make themselves employable. "If you take preachers coming into this country, they should be speaking the English language and not refusing to speak the English language." Mr Brown was expressing an opinion that goes farther than present Home Office legislation. Since last year immigrants have had to show a Standard 3 level of competence in English to acquire citizenship and, if they do not, they must take a course to reach the requisite level."

How the welfare state corrupted Sweden: "Old people in Sweden say that to be Swedish means to supply for your own, to take care of your self, and never be a burden on anyone else's shoulders. Independence and hard work was the common perception of a decent life, and the common perception of morality. That was less than one hundred years ago. My late grandmother used to say something had gone wrong with the world. She was proud to never have asked for help, to have always been able to rely on herself and her husband, proud that they could throughout their lives care for their family. I'm happy that when she passed away at the respectable age of 85, she did so with that dignity still intact. She was never a burden."

Lying is Acceptable for Some: "Wednesday's Washington Times ran a column on global warming by Cato's Patrick Michaels in which he quoted Al Gore as saying, "I believe it is appropriate to have an overrepresentation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience." As a public service I will now translate this politically obtuse statement into English; It is alright to lie to people in order to scare them into doing something that is against their own interest. I feel qualified to present this rendition, as I am very familiar with the concept expressed by Gore, because the main focus of my studies has been the war on people who use certain kinds of drugs".

NYC: Tammany Hall lives on: "Clients big and small spent a whopping $36.1 million last year to hire an army of lobbyists to push their varied causes and financial interests with city officials. The ever-rising lobbying tab jumped by more than 7% over the $33.6 million spent in 2004. And it's 21/2 times the $14.5 million spent only five years ago in 2000. The top 10 earning lobbying firms alone were paid more than $16 million, according to the annual report issued yesterday by the City Clerk's office. The No. 1 slot went to Kasirer Consulting, with $2.4 million in fees. It's headed by Suri Kasirer, a fund-raiser for city Controller Bill Thompson and the wife of former Rudy Giuliani political lieutenant Bruce Teitelbaum. Her clients include Cemusa Inc., the Spain-based firm that recently won the city's huge franchise for bus shelters, newsstands and pay toilets. Cemusa paid Kasirer $96,000. Gene Russianoff, a lawyer with the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit watchdog organization, called the rising lobby tab "disturbing" because "more and more people seem to think government is so complicated they have to grease the skids to get anywhere."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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