‘I DON'T WANT HER TO BE OVERWEIGHT LIKE I WAS AS A GIRL’

Abstract

Widespread concern about a childhood obesity ‘epidemic’ has focused attention on the bodies, weight and food behaviours of mothers and their children. In childhood obesity-related discourse, mothers' bodies are framed in relation to the bodies of children, most directly in claims that fat mothers produce fat babies. Drawing on data from a qualitative study involving interviews with mothers of pre-school aged children, this paper examines how the blurring of body boundaries between women and children are translated into responsibilities in feeding. We argue that in the contemporary stigmatisation of fat, the external auditing of maternal feeding and children's bodies connects the bodies of mothers and children in detrimental ways. By focusing on the ways women are held responsible for both their own and children's bodies, we draw attention to how bodily aspirations, conflict and failure, shame, self-surveillance, judgement and guilt connect women to the bodies of their children. We stress the embodied significance of mother/child relations in early childhood nutritional care and we argue that a punitive anti-fat ethic threatens positive health outcomes for mothers and children.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to acknowledge the help and support of the School of Political and Social Inquiry in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University. Many thanks must go to women who participated in the study and shared their thoughts and experiences so generously. We are very grateful for the support of the childcare centres and their staff, who helped us recruit participants for the project and allowed us to conduct many interviews on centre premises. We would also like to thank the AFS reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article which clarified and developed our thinking.

This project, entitled Improving Australia's response to childhood obesity: Prevention education and its impact on mothers and families, was funded by the Australian Research Council under the Discovery Projects scheme (DP110101759). Chief investigators on the project were Suzanne Fraser (Monash University and Curtin University), Jan Wright (University of Wollongong), JaneMaree Maher (Monash University) and Alan Petersen (Monash University). Claire Tanner (Monash University) conducted all the interviews for the study.

Ethics clearance for the project was obtained from the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (MUHREC). Project Number: CF11/0693 – 2011000332.