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effects does it have on parents, on their children and on the parent-child interactions that are so important for healthy development?

We do not yet know, for example, if heavier children are aware people stigmatize their parents. If so, these children might not only be ashamed of their size, but also might erroneously feel responsible for how people treat their parents.

How we do our work

For this research, published in the journal Psychological Science, we ran three experiments with over 1,000 U.S. participants – about 75% white and 25% other races/ethnicities – over the course of 2022.

We randomly assigned participants to view one of four line drawings depicting a mother or father next to an 8-year-old daughter or son. We also included a short description of the parent and child.

In two of the line drawings and descriptions, the child was described and depicted as “healthy”-weight. In the other two, the child was depicted and described as having “obesity.” The parents were always depicted and described as being healthy-weight. This allowed us to conclude that study participants’ reactions to parents were due to their children’s weights, not the parents’.

We asked participants a few short questions about how good or bad a parent they thought the adult was. Participants also answered questions about what they believed influenced the child’s weight (as well as their academic performance and athleticism, to help obscure the focus of the study). Participants were given 100 “responsibility points” to allot to four factors that could be behind the child’s weight: parent behavior, child behavior, genetic factors and societal factors.

As expected, people who viewed the child with obesity assigned more responsibility points to parent behavior and saw that parent as a worse parent. We found parent and child gender made little difference, consistent with other work. This is consistent with previous research showing people blame parents for children’s obesity more than people blame society or the kids themselves.

We also tested whether providing alternative explanations for the child’s weight would decrease the amount of blame parents received for it. When we told participants the child had a thyroid condition that caused her excess weight, they stigmatized the mother less, holding her less responsible.

Next, our team is exploring how parents’ own weight, income and race/ethnicity influences the stigma directed toward them on account of their child’s excess weight.l

Sheena Cruickshank is a Professor in Biomedical Sciences, University of Manchester