Are Obese Kids Victims of Child Abuse?
The report considers what can be done to reduce the psychological abuse of children, both on a population and an individual level. It is rather coy about what kind of families are most likely to maltreat their children psychologically, perhaps because this would produce yet one more stick with which to beat the poor; and as for the “treatment” of individuals, the report supposes that most psychological maltreatment is the result of error or misunderstanding rather than of malice and depravity. Thus, it can be righted by a little training and exhortation. Doctors are uncomfortable when confronted by the intractability of human malice, and perhaps it is as well that they should be.
I read something in the report that took me back to my student days:
Severe forms of psychological deprivation can be associated with psychosocial short stature, a condition of short stature or growth failure formerly known as psychosocial dwarfism.
Back in the early ’70s, we were taught that the failure of abused children to grow normally through what was then called “maternal neglect” was caused by an insufficiency of food. A horrific experiment had been performed in which maternally deprived children were taken from their mothers and divided into three groups: those given food and affection, those given food but no affection, and those given affection but not enough food. The children in the first two groups grew in an accelerated fashion and by the same amount, those in the third did not. The horrible conclusion was that affection was not necessary to growth.
I am very glad if this is not so. I note, however, the report’s weasel words “associated with” rather than the unequivocal “caused by.” And speaking for myself – and only for myself – I think the psychological maltreatment that I suffered as a child did me some good as well as harm. It put a certain iron in the soul as well as gave me certain defects of character.
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More on parenting and family life at PJ Lifestyle:
Hmmmm. Exactly what constitutes psychological abuse? It’s a pretty amorphous term, even ignoring cultural context. Sounds like the guild of practicing psychlogists is searching for a new revenue stream.
Nope, they just have shitty parents who didn’t do their job properly. That’s not abuse, it’s stupidity.
I live in Lancaster county Pennsylvania and have many Amish neighbors who live the plain life of their ancestors. I do not know how many times I read letters to the ed in the local Lancaster City newspaper, a leftwing rag, that excoriate the Amish and accuse them of child abuse. Most of the letter writers are yuppies who have fled the cesspools of New York or Philadelphia and moved into the country. They accuse the Amish of child abuse because 1. They refuse to send their children to public schools, 2. the children work on the farms with their fathers and in the house with their mothers 3. They live a life based on the values of the Bible where the man and woman have separate roles in the structure of the family.4 Their whole society is based on family structure. These yuppies also get vitriolic when they rant about the horse manure that is left on the roadways by the buggies which the Amish use instead of autos. I wish that these demented yuppies would stay in their cesspool cities and suburbs and not venture into a world of which they know nothing. Modern Americans and Europeans live in a fantasy world where everything is controlled by their beloved government. Anyone who does not fit their corrupt life styles is deemed an enemy.
Odd — they like manure on food, where it can give you E. coli and whatnot, instead of nice clean chemicals, but not in the road? And in most inner cities, sending kids to the public school could in itself be considered a kind of child abuse.
Y’know…if you hang around psychiatrists long enough…
YOU’LL GO FRIKKIN’ NUTS!
I can think of no more effective way to end all familial privacy than to make “child obesity” a legally punishable offense.
Consider: for child obesity to be punishable — against the parents, of course — there would have to be a legal standard by which it could be recognized. That standard would necessarily be quite intricate, with legal maximum weights stated for American children according to their sex, height, and age at the very least. Those numbers would naturally become the province of a regulatory bureaucracy, which would surely possess the power to alter them without prior consultation with the citizenry.
More, the enforcement regime would have to be pre-authorized to conduct home inspections and assessments of childrens’ weights, and at frequent intervals — probably once every three months. Thus, for the parents of minor children, the Fourth Amendment would cease to exist. As offenses involving the domestic treatment of children are referred to the anti-Constitutional, effectively unbounded Family Courts, judges could then strip parents of all rights to or over their children. The offenders would lack any avenue of redress.
It’s a fairly short step from there to a federal law against allowing the parents of minor children to possess firearms. Else altogether too many Child Welfare bureaucrats would be shot on sight.
Not a pretty scenario, by my lights.
My parents had 6 kids and basically left us alone to pursue interests but did support us in our endeavors, whatever they may be. I believe their type of parenting was beneficial in “allowing” us to be ourselves.
I realized later in life that I was psychologically abused by the New York state education system.
I am and always have had a “conservative” viewpoint in life that did not comport with the life viewpoint of the liberal “education” administered in New York’s school system.
Because of that, I was “labeled” at a very early age as being resistive, a trouble maker, a failure at accepting authority, etc.
I didn’t realize it then but I was browbeaten for the first 18 years of my life with viewpoints that I not only did disagreed with, but found to be oppressive and subsequently upsetting. At 18 I finally escaped as fast as I could.
Because of what could be called brainwashing (psychological as well as physical punishment)I could not see it until I moved away and lived in a less oppressive, freer environment. In my case a red state.
The propaganda “forced” upon children via our government schools, as in, sit down, shut up, and do what you’re told as opposed to a “open and freer” learning environment does severe harm to children in their viewpoint of themselves. Probably the only thing worse would be parental abuse.
The problem with designating childhood obesity a category of child abuse is that the parents of such children are usually obese themselves. Obesity is the result of a combination of ignorance and laziness, not necessarily abusiveness. The problem is that obesity causes serious, life-threatening diseases. While there may be no malice aforethought in parents who pass their appalling lifestyle habits on to children, there ought to be some way to step in and try and prevent childhood obesity. Schools and doctors are the first line of defense in these cases, but there’s not a lot they can do with out the cooperation of parents right now. Maybe we ought to be able to stage some sort of medical intervention in cases of childhood morbid obesity. We step in when parents threaten their children’s lives by starving them, why not when parents overfeed them? Plus, we as a society, are paying bajillions a year for obesity
-related disease.
We once lived next door to a family that consisted of two grossly obese parents of two equally obese children and it was heartbreaking to witness the children walk from the front door to the car to go to school. The little girl, about five years old, would be utterly fatigued from walking down three little steps and a relatively short path to the driveway. And then you’d look at her parents and how grossly obese they were and know that that was going to be her life forever. She would never be able to run and play, never wear pretty clothes, never go on a date or to a dance, probably never have much of a social life as she got older and kids sorted themselves into various cliques and groups. The boy, a middle schooler was already exhibiting social and emotional problems and had been suspended from school several times.
Adults, I suppose, have the right to eat themselves to death, although it would be nice if they’d all do it on their own dime. Children, OTOH, have no control over these things when they’re young, and by the time they do have some control, the patterns have been set and it’s too late. Not sure arresting the parents for abuse is the best answer, but someone ought to be able to do something.
Nora, I have worked with alcoholics and their recovery from destructive drinking habits for years. Whatever recovery “religion” a person uses to clean up their lives, the person has to make an active choice to change their behavior.
There is money to be made treating people with these disorders. Recovery rates are below 10% in the most popular treatment programs. The abuse of the system becomes obvious when you see people coming back for treatment for the second, third or fourth time.
Circumstances or family often start the process, but a person has to make an active choice to change. There is money to be made from those who won’t.
Yeah, but we’re talking about little kids. I don’t care if an adult wants to shovel lard down their faces all day long, although I resent the fact that obese people and their ignorant, lazy, selfish attitudes are driving up my relatively minor health care expenses.
When it comes to a five year old who weighs as much or more than me — a 5’10″ woman who wears a size 6 — then there’s a problem and someone ought to be able to intervene before it becomes a permanent situation. The younger a person becomes obese, and the longer they stay obese, the harder it becomes to correct the situation.
You said it!!! Dependency treatment is a multi-billion dollar business. From counselors to medical clinics and related labs and tests (addicts are very, very ill) to law enforcement to courts to penal and the cycle goes round and round. In addition the current use by states to rediagnose their chronically addicted to “Permanently disabled” due to an asundry of psyco diagnoses we are seeing an exponential growth in the people permanently placed on Social Security Disability. It’s a serious problem and an issue of National Security. Most people look at me like I’m from Mars when I bring this up but is is quite serious. Glad I’m not alone in recognizing this problem. The only solution is isolation with the offer of free drugs if they self-admit to permanent isolation among other drug users. They grown their own food, work etc in exchange for free drugs However they can never leave and expose other people to this disease.
I don’t suppose there is any remote possibility that an obesity could often be the result of something besides ignorance and laziness? Something like, I dunno, genetics? Or false information?
Gary Taubes explains that some of us simply do not get a full or satisfied sensation from eating carbs. If you are one of the fortunate multitude of people for whom carbs are filling, you are to be congratulated. But if you are not so fortunate, it does not necessarily imply a moral failing. It could simply imply a physiological condition.
My own theory is that some of us just enjoy feeling morally superior to those we look down on. As an erstwhile fattie, I’ve seen plenty of that.
My mom was quite large, and so was I. My brother, on the other hand, took on more normal proportions like my dad. My brother married a very slender woman, had twin girls, and divorced. She later remarried a beanpole, and they had two beanpole kids. Meanwhile, the twin girls grew up to look… just like my mom.
Call it a coincidence if you like. I call it genetics. That’s not the whole story, but it obviously plays a part.
“Obesity is the result of a combination of ignorance and laziness, not necessarily abusiveness.”
I agree with this statement. However, the rest of your posts make it clear that you’re still falling for the “obesity is caused by gluttony and/or sloth” idea. My agreement with the statement relates to the laziness of people who think it’s easier to think that obese people are lazy because, despite all evidence and research to the contrary, they still think the simplistic calorie measurement of food is actually useful when explaining the relationship between food and obesity, or that the math actually works when exclaiming with proud certainty that exercise will actually eliminate a significant number of those little calorie tokens.
Overweight people may eat more because they have more cells to feed … a natural consequence of being bigger. Overweight people may seem lazy because an excess of carbohydrates causes insulin to purge available fuel from their blood, making it unavailable to their cells and, coincidentally, increasing hunger as the cells demand sustenance. Overweight people may become obese because they’ve been told to reduce fat, which necessarily involves increasing carb consumption even if calorie input doesn’t change, and to eat things that are healthy but which, surprise, contain an amazing amount of fructose. They remain obese because every day they eat more carbs they accelerate the natural development of insulin resistance as the glucose transport mechanisms degrade, as they do in all people, and insulin shoves more fatty acids into fat cells even as byproducts of glucose and fructose processing lock them there as triglycerides.
I say these things as a person who spent his life obese, dieting, ridiculed and condescended, who *finally* learned the truth and is no longer any of those things. So do I think jail time would be good for the lazy and ignorant? Those who told me to stop eating fats, that exercise on my shredded knees was the answer, that my obesity was a moral failing on MY part and that I am an object to be mocked, derided, and abused? But jail time?
Yeah, Nora, I’m ok with that.
Hear hear. Or rather, here here, as I’ve had it up to here with the abuse many people love to heap on fatties.
Your answers lay in the govt approved nutritional pyramid. I blame the people who foist this pure propaganda on a maleducated populace. This is all traced to the early fifties and the push for a grain based diet by govt.
Get back to the foods we were supposed to eat and you won’t see the numbers of obese children regardless of the amount of exercise they get.
Read “Wheat Belly” by Dr. William Davis M.D. and “Why we are fat” by Gary Taubes.
Diet and nutrition have foundational effects upon our physiology and our psychology.
Agreed. Instead of prosecuting parents for child abuse, why don’t we jail government bureaucrats for malpractice?
This points to another issue with the do-gooder mindset. If we legislate government intervention for obesity, it will doubtless include prescribing what kind of diet must be forced upon the victim, and it is likely to be something like the government approved “food pyramid”, a standard based not upon science (the science being controversial) but rather upon the interests of lobby groups. And as with most government programs, it is unlikely to make things better.
Our society has become more and more oppressive and controlling because of the actions of these “do-gooders” and their enablers, like Nora, who feel that they must step in and do something about those around them. They like to frame it in the light of “compassion” or “controlling the societal cost”, but, when it comes down to it, they just want to affirm their self absorbed sense of superiority to those they are prejudiced against. So, the obese or smokers don’t live as long…how much do these people who “take good care of themeselves” cost our society when they live the last 15 or 20 years of their life subsisting on Medicare racking up the bill for the rest of us as they slowly die from the ravages of old age?
Thanks Mike. I feel the same way about Nora’s post. The fact that my bad habits drive up Nora’s healthcare costs isn’t my fault. It’s the fault of our flawed healthcare system which I had nothing to do with. By that same flawed logic if you get hurt, and many do, while jogging or working out at the gym you are driving up my healthcare costs just the same by participating in unnecessary activity.
> A horrific experiment had been performed…
I know that Godwin’s Law would have us all cease and desist invoking Hitler, but is there a better adjective to describe carrying out experiments on living people than Nazified?
I’m reminded of Gerry Rafferty’s lyric phrase, “…so many people but it’s got no soul.”
My Mama use to say: When you add the word soul to the discussion many many worlds open and one must consider the angel who looked down upon the fat meat marriage and say: ” I want to be their child to what feels like FOREVER and bring back this experience to my world”
Of course other angels with more experience may want to shorten this forever feeling
people need to mind their own business.
so a kid is fat, I don’t care.
is the kid polite and a nice kid? all that matters to me.
I went to school with a women who is obese and has obese children. I have noticed from photos that her infant son is already expressing obese characteristics. This leads me to believe that there is something genetic about his obesity, considering at this age he probably does not eat real adult food. Most likely breast milk or formula and baby food. Also, not all of her children are obese, so perhaps some inherited the genes and some did not.
Greetings:
I’m a bit of a fan of Eric Hoffer’s observation that “What starts off as a cause, becomes a business, and ends up as a racket.” to explain occurrences of these sorts.
When one looks into the compensation of executives of too many non-profits, one can easily discern the need for a perpetual marketing department and a eternally creeping mission statement.
People just need to mind their own GD business. I knew when I heard of the first smoking ban outside on a fricking beach that the politics of pure democracy had gone totally out of control, and the food Nazis were coming.
“The evolutionist Richard Dawkins has even suggested that to bring up children in any particular religious faith is a form of child abuse, since the child’s subsequent freedom to choose his beliefs according to the evidence is thereby impaired…”
This is the means by which American persecution of Christians will be realized. Homeschooling Christian parents who do not wish to see their children indoctrinated by secular humanist boot camps (aka public schools), those who raise their children up in their faith (“hate speech” according to the most shrill of liberals), and those who shelter their children by keeping them from popular culture. They will be labeled as unfit parents and have their children snatched away to be raised by the state.
Of course, Muslim parents will not undergo the same horrors as to do so would amount to racism or religious intolerance.
The amount of comments suggesting that there be a law, or that someone “do something about it” is frightening. Even the United States seems to be ripe for tyranny.
Religious parents are more likely than others to force their children to finish what’s on their plates. Then when they grow up and know they are obese, they finish their food even when they’re not hungry.
http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/ObesityAndHell.html
That’s about the stupidest conclusion I have ever seen in my life. Forget about tangible cause and effect relationships regarding poverty, local cuisine, and culture – you know, those variables that actually affect how much people eat and exercise – and just lob another attack against religious people who you have virtually no understanding of. Professor, you should stick to linguistics.
Left/libtardism is child abuse… just ask anyone who had a gender-neutral vegan upringing with no war toys and only public television.
“Nothing illustrates better than child abuse the tendency of ill-defined but nevertheless meaningful concepts to spread beyond their original signification to include more and more phenomena.”
You are forever banned from my notice for this disgusting assemblage of words. What an idiot you must be.
I’d advise everyone to tread very carefully. If you take this to its logical end, any form of bad parenting is psychological abuse and there is a lot of bad parenting out there. And then there is the parenting with which one does not agree. I’m sure there are any number of people who are horrified by parents who send their sons to military schools. Or how about the parents who put their very young daughters on the beauty pageant circuit? Who will get to decide what constitutes “bad parenting”??
Liberals have long wanted to take over the reins of child raising. Government-run day care centers, universal mandatory pre-school, such are the stuff liberal dreams are made of. Hillary Clinton, raised by an authoritarian father and an acolyte of Marie Wright Edelman, used to believe (or, for all I know, still believes) that children should have the right to sue their parents with government acting as their advocates (and even surrogates). Your parents are sending you to military school and you don’t want to go? Sue!
Socialists like Edelman concluded long ago that they had gotten everything they could out of the civil rights movement and would turn their attention to “the children.” All social programs would start with children; socialize the children and their parents will follow. (The SCHIPS program is a good example. The program originally was to benefit poor children not qualified for Medicaid whose parents didn’t have health insurance and were unable to pay for it. Democrats managed to expand the program well into the middle class, include the parents and make ability to pay much less of an issue. Designed mission creep.)
Lots of very slippery slopes here.
Excellent comment, Sukie. I disagree on only one point. There may be mini-slopes, but the real danger lies in the one huge landslide of entitlement and collectivism we’ve been caught in since about 1937. He who hands out the money controls the result.
Thank you for pointing to “Why we Get Fat and What To Do About It”, by Gary Taubes. I have purchased a Kindle copy for each of my children and one for my brother.
“The editorial in the Lancet referred to a report on the psychological maltreatment of children by the American Academy of Pediatrics,” – Terrible, the child abuse the AAP engages in!
From time to time I see reported in the UK press cases of children who have been labelled “clinically obese” after their weight and other measurements have been taken. There’s only one thing wrong with some of these cases: the children look anything but obese! It seems that their body mass index(BMI) has been worked out by some quite esoteric formula whish is almost impossible for parents to understand.
The moral? If the theory leads to ridiculous results it is plainly wrong and should be discarded. Only problem is that too many pockets, topped up by taxpayers’ money, would be in danger of being emptied.
If there is going to be any such regular examination of children, then let it be done in a way that the parents themselves can test independently.
I’m old enough (born in 1938) to remember when fat people were few and far between. The only people who “exercised” were those who were working out to qualify for sports. One major difference between then and now was that most adults smoked cigarettes. The appetite reducing effects of smoking kept them slim. Now we have effectively reduced cigarette smoking to a small minority and have massive numbers of fat people. Which brings up the question, which group is more “expensive” for society? Smokers or fatties? I’d guess fatties would be as their medical problems start much earlier in life than those of smokers do. From the standpoint of Social Security and Medicare, I would suspect that fatties are more “expensive” too than cigarette smokers are. In effect, we’ve created a condition that costs us “more” than what we had before…
Rightists are in favor of smoking cigarettes
but opposed to smoking marijuana.
Leftists are in favor of smoking marijuana
but opposed to smoking cigarettes.
Smoke stinks.
The left stinks.
The right stinks.
I blame the FDA, big Pharma, EPA, and any other govt program that is out there. It has taken a long time but the TRUTH is coming out. Most of what we eat, take for illness, and others its clear that no one has our backs.
I’m sorry I meant to include Monsanto, Baxter yada yada yada.