Childhood obesity has been increasing in recent years. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, in 2024, approximately 1 in 5 U.S. children and teens will meet the clinical definition of obesity.
Preventing childhood obesity is not easy. For many years, the main approach has focused on encouraging healthy eating and regular physical activity. Researchers at Yale University now suggest that we should add another important factor to that list: reducing parental stress.
A research team led by Yale University psychologist Rajita Sinha has found evidence that reducing parental stress may help reduce the risk of obesity in young children.
“This is the third leg of the stool,” Sinha said. “We already knew that stress could significantly contribute to the development of childhood obesity. Remarkably, when parents managed stress better, they improved their parenting and lowered their young children’s risk of obesity.”
The research results were published in a magazine Pediatrics.
Parental stress can affect children’s eating and health
Previous research has shown that if parents are obese, their children are also more likely to be obese. Researchers also suspect that parental stress may also be a hidden cause of childhood obesity.
Previous research has shown that stressed parents are more likely to rely on fast food and less healthy eating habits. These choices can influence your child’s behavior and food preferences. When parents feel overwhelmed, they can disrupt family routines, make more unhealthy food choices, and reduce positive parenting behaviors.
Still, most current childhood obesity prevention programs primarily focus on nutritional education and physical activity. According to Sinha, these efforts often do not lead to lasting improvements.
Sinha is the Foundation Endowed Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Neuroscience and Child Studies at Yale School of Medicine.
Test a stress reduction program for parents
To investigate the role of parental stress, researchers conducted a 12-week randomized prevention trial with 114 parents from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. All participants had children between the ages of 2 and 5 who were overweight or obese.
Parents were assigned to one of two groups. One group participated in a stress-focused program called Parenting Mindful for Health (PMH). The program taught mindfulness techniques and behavioral self-regulation skills, while also teaching healthy nutrition and physical activity.
The other group served as a comparison group and only received counseling about nutrition and physical activity.
Both groups met once a week for sessions of up to 2 hours. During the 12-week program, researchers measured parents’ stress levels and tracked their children’s weight. The children were also weighed three months after the program ended.
The researchers also monitored children’s healthy and unhealthy food intake before and after the intervention, as well as parenting behaviors such as warmth, listening, patience, and positive emotional interactions.
The results show that improvement is seen when parents’ stress is reduced.
By the end of the study, only the PMH group had lower parental stress levels, improved parenting behaviors, and less unhealthy eating among their children. Importantly, this group of children did not show significant weight gain three months after the program ended.
The control group showed a different pattern. Parents in that group did not experience improvements in stress levels, parenting behaviors, or children’s unhealthy dietary intake. Their children gained significantly more weight and were six times more likely to be in the overweight or obese risk category at three-month follow-up.
The researchers also observed that the association between high parental stress, weak parenting behaviors, and reduced children’s healthy food intake remained in the control group three months later. In contrast, this association was no longer significant in the PMH group.
“Combining mindfulness and behavioral self-regulation to manage stress, and integrating healthy nutrition and physical activity, appears to protect young children from some of the negative effects of stress on weight gain,” Sinha said.
Based on research on stress and health
This study is based on ongoing research at the Yale University Stress Center. The Center is an interdisciplinary consortium established with support from the 2007 National Institutes of Health Common Fund Initiative to study the biology of stress, health behaviors, and their effects on chronic mental and physical diseases.
“Childhood obesity is a huge problem right now, and the results of this study are highly relevant to this administration’s priorities to reduce childhood chronic disease,” said Sinha. “When people start gaining weight, even children are at increased risk for obesity-related diseases.”
The findings suggest that longitudinal studies of health-conscious parenting may provide further insight into reducing childhood obesity risk. Results from a two-year follow-up of a larger group of families are expected in the future, Sinha said.
Research team and support
The study was co-led by Wendy Silverman, Alfred A. Professor of Psychology and Professor of Psychology at the Children’s Research Center, and Ania Jastreboff, Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor of Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics. Additional authors were from the Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics and Neuroscience and the Yale Child Study Center.
Researchers from Bethesda Group, Chicago School of Occupational Psychology, University of New Mexico, and George Mason University also contributed to the study.
This research was supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).
