From Children's Hospital Boston: Associations between maternal behaviors and obese children

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22349735

Obesity (Silver Spring). 2012 Feb 21. doi: 10.1038/oby.2012.43. [Epub ahead of print]
Associations of obesogenic behaviors in mothers and obese children participating in a randomized trial.
Sonneville KR, Rifas-Shiman SL, Kleinman K, Gortmaker S, Gillman MW, Taveras EM.
Source
Division of Adolescent Medicine, Children's Hospital Boston, Boston, MA.

Abstract
Relatively little research has assessed the association between obesogenic behaviors in parents and their children. The objective of the present analysis was to examine cross-sectional associations in television (TV)/video viewing, sugar-sweetened beverage intake, and fast food intake between mothers and their pre-school aged children. We studied baseline data among 428 participants in High Five for Kids, a randomized controlled trial of behavior change among overweight and obese children ages 2-6.9 years. The main exposures were whether mothers viewed TV/videos <1 hour/day, drank <1 serving/day of sugar-sweetened beverages, and ate fast food <1 time/week. The main outcomes were whether children met these goals for the same behaviors. Using multivariate logistic regression adjusted for maternal and child characteristics, we estimated odds ratios of children meeting the behavioral goals. The majority of mothers ate fast food <1 time/week (73%) and drank <1 serving/day of sugar-sweetened beverages (73%), while few mothers viewed <1 hour/day of TV/videos (31%). Most children met the fast food goal (68%), but not the goals for sugar-sweetened beverages (31%) or TV/video viewing (13%). In adjusted models, the odds ratios for a child meeting the goal were 3.2 (95% CI 1.7, 6.2) for TV/video viewing, 5.8 (95% CI 2.8, 12.0) for sugar-sweetened beverage intake, and 17.5 (95% CI 9.8, 31.2) for fast food intake if their mothers met the goal for the same behavior. Obesogenic behaviors of mothers and pre-school aged children were strongly associated. Our findings lend support to obesity prevention strategies that target parental behavior and the family environment.