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Flexible Parents, Fit Kids?
The Link Between Discipline Style and Weight
By Kelly Burgess
Parent shows high demands for the child's self-control but also shows the child a lot of warmth and sensitivity.
Dr. Kay Rhee, a clinical instructor and research fellow at Boston University School of Medicine and the study's lead author, says it's not always easy to categorize parents based on one specific behavior. "I was trying to make a distinction between parenting styles and specific parenting behaviors," she says. "However, parenting styles can lead to strict behaviors and may keep children from developing self-confidence and decision-making abilities."
For example, if a parent always makes a child eat everything on her plate, the child may have difficultly recognizing when she's full on her own. Or a child who is absolutely forbidden to eat sweets or drink soft drinks may indulge to excess when given the opportunity, rather than learning moderation and self-control. While these are parenting behaviors, they are indicators of rigid, or authoritarian, parenting styles.
Of course there is no perfect parent, and this was not a perfect study. Dr. Rhee notes that the father's interaction with the child was not studied and the mother's weight was not taken into account, often an important indicator of childhood obesity.
Janet Levine, author of Know Your Parenting Personality (Wiley, 2003), also notes that any study looking narrowly at parenting styles leaves one important consideration out: the child's personality. Some children will be naturally more compliant and in sync with their parent's personality, regardless of the parent's style.