The article “perceptions of low-income mothers about the causes and ways to prevent overweight in children,” written by Danford, Schultz, Rosenblum, Miller, and Lumeng, focused on the causes and ways to prevent overweight in children. To determine the causes of weight gain in children and ways to avoid it, a qualitative study was conducted by 286 low-income mothers from 2009-2013; each research stage took two years. The sampling method was also qualitative in nature. The sampling criterion included English language proficiency and caregiver-enrolled preschoolers in the Head Start health program for low-income families. The authors drive most of their arguments by appealing to the readers’ emotions and providing information on the cause and preventive measures for obesity in children in the United States.
The study focused on female parents because most care for children at home. Females also play an essential role in childhood obesity prevention because they are primarily responsible for feeding their children healthy or unhealthy food. The research covered some of the comorbidities of overweight and obesity. Therefore, it was possible to directly ask mothers if they knew the causes of weight gain in children and present preventative measures. As a result, it was found that 97.3% of the mothers correctly answered that being overweight is caused by a lack of physical activity and eating food high in fat content (Danford et al., 2015). The study uncovered that mothers had limited knowledge about obesity prevention in child growth stages, which could have been used as result-oriented motivation to educate them further on ways they can reduce the risk of childhood obesity. In addition, through sampling methods like interviews which as administered verbally, most mothers were able to identify the root cause of obesity correctly. In conclusion, this study emphasizes mothers’ lack of adequate knowledge, which is an obstacle to taking appropriate measures to prevent their children from gaining too much weight.
Reference
Danford, C. A., Schultz, C. M., Rosenblum, K., Miller, A. L., & Lumeng, J. C. (2015). Perceptions of low‐income mothers about the causes and ways to prevent overweight in children. Child: care, health, and development, 41(6), 865-872.