Child Overweight – Mothers’ Competence to Take Action

Abstract

Objective: We investigated mothers’ possession and display of action competence to counteract or prevent overweight and eventual obesity in their children. Action competence is defined as a personal resource where the most important aspect is the individual’s wish to take action and to believe in its benefit. It unfolds within the room for action as experienced by the individual due to action obstacles and action potentials. Methods: In a case-control study, mothers of 111 overweight children (MOC) were compared with mothers of 149 nonoverweight children (MNC). They underwent a semistructured interview about action competence, lifestyle, and their 7- to 9-year-old children. Results: Compared to MNC, MOC considered it more important to change habits, both for themselves (p = 0.003) and their children (p < 0.001). MOC were more motivated to change habits (p < 0.001), assessed their action competence to be higher (p < 0.001), and felt to a greater extent that they supported their children to achieve an appropriate weight (p < 0.001) compared with MNC. No difference was found between MOC and MNC in the assessment of their own room for action and their children’s room for action. Conclusion: Self-assessed room for action was not limited for either MOC or MNC, and MOC even assessed their action competence to be greater.

Childhood overweight dependence on mother-child relationship

“…The study was a cross sectional case-control one conducted as part of an investigation of mothers’ wishes and abilities to counteract overweight among their seven to nine year old children. 22 , 23 Mother-child pairs were recruited from The Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC) 24 established when the mothers were pregnant. Initially 101 thousand mothers were included, each having been interviewed five times in the period to the children’ seventh birthdays.…”

Maternal and Child Awareness and Expectations of Child Overweight

“…To be able to counteract the epidemic of childhood obesity and its adverse effects [3,7,8], it is important to understand the parents' opinions about the weight of their children, and it is a key step in forming effective liaisons between health professionals and parents [9]. To understand whether and how mothers play out action to counteract overweight in their children -which we reported in a joint publication [10] -it would be helpful to know whether the mothers are aware of the overweight in their children. Studies from the UK [11,12], Italy [13], USA [14,15], Canada [16] and Australia [17,18] have shown that parents are unconcerned and unaware of their children's weight status as being overweight or obese [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”