Framing the mother: childhood obesity, maternal responsibility and care

Abstract

Currently in developed nations, childhood obesity is generating widespread concern and prompting social and institutional responses. Obesity is constructed as a broad public health crisis, but individuals are constructed as responsible for their own bodies and body sizes within this crisis. We are particularly interested in two aspects that focus on women as central to this phenomenon; the first is the imputation of maternal responsibility for the weight of children and the second is the role that specific fears about flesh and women's bodies play in how childhood obesity is represented. We analyse media representations of childhood obesity in Australia and draw out the discourses of maternal responsibility and the intertwining of mothers and children's bodies. We frame the childhood obesity crisis within a broader discussion of women, care and responsibility, suggesting that childhood obesity offers another embodied location to reinforce and extend women's roles and responsibilities as mothers, in response to changing patterns of work and care.

Obesity in primary care: a qualitative synthesis of patient and practitioner perspectives on roles and responsibilities

“…7 The recent epidemiological shift from acute to chronic illnesses marked the rise of the 'lifestyle era'. 8 Fatness is now framed as a social irresponsibility, from poor parenting to overburdening health services, 9,10 and the common response is to focus on individual responsibility and behaviour change. 11,12 Conversely, the landmark Foresight report emphasises wider determinants of obesity (for example, psychosocial, infrastructural, and economic).…”

Editorial

“…Com essa aparentemente simples troca de nome, Hall inscreveu um novo campo de conhecimentos nos marcos do saber especializado, científico: 1) demarcou o território que separaria a nova produção disciplinada da produção pré-disciplinar ou não ainda disciplinada; 2) estabeleceu a base da 'correta educação' e 3) definiu, para ele mesmo ocupar, o lugar de pai fundador daquele novo saber (WARDEN, 2014, p. 253 (MAHER et al, 2010;ZIVKOVIC et al, 2010).…”

A Philosophical Examination of Social Justice and Child Poverty

“…Children in poverty do not merely lack specific functionings (or resources) they experience this lack as harmful, especially in interaction with other people, children and adults alike; within different institutions, the harm of poverty becomes pressing. These experiences add insult to injury; on the one hand, they are embedded in a societal climate in which poverty is framed to a large extent as personal failure and in which the blame for child poverty is put on parents and families; it is often accompanied by sexism, which targets lone mothers as bad mothers, unable to keep a husband that could care for them and their children; the same framing is also prevalent in the discourse about poverty and obese children (Maher, Fraser and Wright 2010). Such an atmosphere is equally present in the experience of children, who are well aware of how they and their families are perceived in the public and by others.…”