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The title of this post does not share anything we probably couldn’t have guessed ourselves.  But studies that were published this month dig deeper into the question of how much influence nature and nurture have on a child’s growth and health.

Height

An article in this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association by Parul Christian describes research findings that the taller a woman from a developing country is, the higher the likelihood that her child will be born without complications, and that the child will survive childhood.  Women in many developing countries (the study focused on Sub-Saharan Africa and south-central Asia) are often affected by undernutrition, which leads to short stature or low body mass index – both of which can negatively affect fetal growth.

The study found that a mother’s height, more than her income or education, predicted a newborn’s size at birth, their growth potential, and the likelihood that the baby would survive.  Women in developing countries who do not have access to proper nutrition are more likely to have children who’s growth is stunted, who will experience health problems, or may die during childhood than are women who do have access.  The study suggests that women need access to proper nutrition in order to be healthy themselves so that their children are more likely to be healthy both during fetal development and childhood.

Obesity

The April 7th issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition included an article by UK researchers that found that among more than 7,000 2- to 15-year-olds in a national study, those who had two obese parents were 12 times more likely to be obese than children with two normal-weight parents.  In fact, the results of the 5-year study found that only about 2% of children with two normal-weight parents were obese.  In families with two obese parents, 22% of kids were also obese.  And, when both parents were severely obese, 35% of children were obese.  These findings may help health care providers intervene early in a child’s development to help prevent childhood obesity.

When the researchers looked at the influence of each parent’s weight on a child’s risk for obesity, they found that children are at much higher risk for childhood obesity if their mother is obese than if their father is.  While they did not look into the reasons for this, it is believed that the mother’s health during fetal development and her role in managing her child’s diet are contributing factors, underlining the need for parents to live a healthy lifestyle and stress the importance of exercise and a healthy diet.

Poverty

Finally, an article in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics looked at the overall impact of hardship on child health and well-being.  The study defined hardships as food insecurity (lack of money to purchase enough nutritious food), housing insecurity (unstable or overcrowded housing), and energy insecurity (inability of families to afford consistent home heating or cooling).  The less secure the family, the greater the hardship they experienced.  The greater the hardship, the more likely the 7,000 infants and toddlers in the study were found to be in poor health, hospitalized, at risk for developmental delays (both physical and psychological).

“The current findings raise serious concerns about the future well-being of America’s young children, given rising poverty among families with young children and many households’ inadequate wages and benefits to meet fluctuating food, housing, and energy costs,” explained lead author Deborah A. Frank, MD, director of BMC’s Grow Clinic and a Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine.

Press Releases

• In poor countries, taller moms’ kids are healthier (Reuters Health)
• Parents’ obesity, especially mom’s, tied to kids’ risk (Reuters Health)
• Poverty hurts kids’ growth, development (United Press International)
• BMC Pediatricians Find Link Between Cumulative Hardship and Health in Low-Income Young Children (Children’s HealthWatch)