‘I Think It Will Be Like This Forever’: How Family Narratives Affect Participation in a Childhood Weight Management Intervention

Abstract

The family represents the cause of as well as the solution to childhood overweight in many family-based childhood weight management interventions. Involving the family also entails involving the individual family members’ experiences with, attitudes towards, and understandings of obesity. This study explores how families with life-long experiences of overweight manage and experience a family-based childhood weight management intervention in Northern Zealand in Denmark. The analysis is focused on family narratives and their temporal character. The families’ narratives about overweight and past weight management interventions are crucial to how they understand and manage the present intervention. Additionally, the families expect the focus on weight management to continue to be a constant part of their everyday life. The paper concludes that the understanding of weight management in interventions should take its point of departure in the life-world, which the individual family creates through members’ narratives about overweight.

“A balancing act”: parents’ longitudinal perspectives of weight-related discussions with their children following obesity treatment

“…Similar findings were raised in our previous qualitative study, in which parents expressed a need for increased guidance and support from healthcare professionals [ 5 ]. This absence of support to address their child’s weight may foster a sense of hopelessness, as shown in studies with parents of older children with obesity [ 39 , 40 ]. That is, parents may develop the belief that children will struggle with obesity for the rest of their lives.…”