Reassessing the Influence of Parents and Advertising on Children’s BMI

Abstract

With many rendering child obesity as a national priority, researchers are calling for transformative approaches to investigating the precursors of child obesity, including persuasion, and parental and media socialization, among others. This research utilizes a matched child-parent survey to test a multifaceted model of child obesity, with child reports on targeted food advertising evidencing marketplace influences. Findings support the proactive role that parents assume based on their perceptions of the inappropriateness of child-targeted food marketing. While this parental response is negatively related to children’s body mass index (BMI), the promising relationship is attenuated by the extent of child exposure to food marketing.

Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank and acknowledge Drs. Bree L. Dority, Mary G. McGarvey, and Patricia F. Kennedy for their work in original data collection and organization, which was supported by the National Research Initiative of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, grant 2005-35215-15598.

Notes

1 The average mean child BMI was not statistically different for those parents who reported their own BMI compared to those that did not report their own BMI and were therefore excluded from the sample.