Parental obesity impacts child’s development: research
Posted January 3, 2017 9:03 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
MONTREAL, QUE. (NEWS 1130) – For years overweight mothers have been blamed for jeopardizing their child’s health, now a new study says obese dads can be just as responsible.
The US National Institutes of Health authored the study and found children of obese fathers were 75 per cent more likely to fail the “personal-social” sections compared with children of normal weight fathers. The new information comes to light after years of blaming overweight moms for putting their children’s health at risk.
In the past year, researchers from Quebec found plus-sized pregnancies can elevate a baby’s lifetime risk of stroke and heart attack while other studies have connected maternal obesity with higher odds of autism and a shorter life expectancy in children.
The New York state study involved more than 5,000 women who gave birth between 2008 and 2010 where women provided information on both partners’ height, weight, health and lifestyle.
According to researchers, “the findings suggest that maternal and paternal obesity are each associated with specific delays in early childhood development.”
The report which has been published in the journal, Pediatrics could also raise emerging concerns that obesity may alter a man’s sperm which could lead to effect’s his the baby’s brain development.
The report comes as rates of overweight and obesity soar among a new generation of expectant mothers. In Canada, nearly one-quarter of women of childbearing age are obese.
