I grew up in a single parent household and my mom had some issues to work through that made her absent some.

In any case she was a conduit for the larger social/economic food environment which I do blame for pursuing maximum personal profits regardless of any and all consequences.

I remember being bombarded by cereal commercials as a kid and all the boxes having a toy. I had government breakfasts and lunches which I was and am most grateful for but I am sure they were not particularly healthy.

I don't remember having a choice to take home economics to learn to cook. Very important for my situation as my mom didn't cook. I don't remember a single class on nutrition at school. I do remember fast food restaurants everywhere.

Thankfully as an adult I am now eating better than ever with more knowledge and I am healthier than ever.

But what is impacting a person is vastly more than their immediate family and that was very important for me to understand.

[PrairieGirl]

I don't want to blame them, but when you're an overweight child it's not your choice, you don't buy, cook, or choose the food. I was an overweight child and my mom knew I was bullied for it. All the women in my family are overweight, except my grandmother who always berated the rest of us for being overweight.

When I visit my parents now I understand why I was overweight, they literally don't eat any fruit or vegetables and all the food is processed with no lack of added sweets and salty snacks. My dad seems to be able to navigate this without being too overweight, but my mom is always gaining, losing, or regaining weight and was morbidly obese and unhappy throughout my childhood.

I'd like to end this for me, but I continue to struggle.

[nationalparker]

Wonder how many moms "blame" their children for add'l weight from pregnancy? So many factors in it all - genetics, parents' parents, where does it end - everyone has a parent they learn from.

[nelie]

I think we can see in this thread that there are vast experience differences. Like I said before, I don't blame my mom and my mom worked 2 full time jobs for many years so there wasn't a great deal of supervision although I spent a lot of time at my grandparents house. We also used to get fresh fruit and vegetables from my grandparents garden as well as neighbors. My mom cooked everything from scratch and we hardly ever ate out. Things like hamburger helper or McDonald's weren't part of my childhood. Now that my mom is older and remarried and only works 1 full time job, they have a large abundant garden with lots of vegetables and some fruit. My mom still cooks and rarely eats out but both my stepfather and mother are overweight.

[sacha]

Originally Posted by nationalparker

Wonder how many moms "blame" their children for add'l weight from pregnancy? So many factors in it all - genetics, parents' parents, where does it end - everyone has a parent they learn from.

Or how many moms spend hours a day cooking fresh healthy food and their kids just toss it on the floor and refuse to eat it! That's my life!

My children are not overweight, and I was not overweight until college. If there is one thing I remember about my mom's cooking, is that even if she served healthy stuff at every meal (she didn't), I wouldn't eat it anyways.

I assign far less blame to my parents now that I am one myself (I didn't much to begin with), because it really is a two-way street. I see so many picky adults here on 3FC and wonder if once upon a time, their parents just gave up with it? How much time and money does one spend?

[Arctic Mama]

Ha! I concur, Sacha.

[Selina]

My mother is about 20 pounds overweight, she's 48 and had both her hips replaced. I do not blame her for my weight problems, since none of us in the family are seriously overweight. I do wish she supported me more in terms of what sort of food we buy as a family and what we cook.

[sacha]

Originally Posted by Arctic Mama

Ha! I concur, Sacha.

Can you tell my beautiful cranberry oat gluten-free muffins were scooped up by the dog this afternoon?

[AnnRue]

I do kind of blame my mother. A study came out a few years ago that said that if your mother was on a diet while pregnant with you.. you would be more likely to be obese. I teased my mom about that. My mom dieted the entire time she was pregnant with me and I was actually very small and thin as a toddler. I think honestly there is some sort of physical desire within me to eat even if I am not hungry and I wonder if it wasn't from that. She didn't diet with my brother and he came out like a butterball. And also, he has never really desired food.

But also, my mother did not do me any favors as a child. Though I was NOT fat, she always deprived me of food because I was a girl. While my brother wasn't that thin but she was always shoving food into him. Setting up this dynamic of there being food around that I couldn't have, but wanted. So of course, when I got out on my own I went to the nearest *bad food* place and started shoveling it in.

Further, when I did start gaining weight, she was NOT honest with me. It took my brother coming to me one day for me to even notice.

Though when you look to the idea of "blame" I mean it isn't like I am going on Maury to talk about it. It was what it was. Forward. You know?

[GlamourGirl827]

Originally Posted by nationalparker

Wonder how many moms "blame" their children for add'l weight from pregnancy? So many factors in it all - genetics, parents' parents, where does it end - everyone has a parent they learn from.

There's a BIG difference between being a child and having your entire "food" world controlled by your parents vs being an adult that is pregnant and gains weight from their own choices. You're comparing apples to oranges.
I gained a lot of weight with each baby, but I would never blame my kids. I gained while pregnant, but its not their fault.

As for feeding kids healthy and giving up because they refuse it, as someone who grew up with the worst eating habits/choices a parent could give and now a mom of 3 AND my oldest son is autistic, and very very often chilcren on the spectrum are very picky eaters, I can say that offering a kid mac n cheese because you are just tired of them throwing their green beans at you does not lead to childhood obesity...Here's what cause me to be morbidly obese as a child. My example is unfortunately extreme.

As a child, I was never offered fresh veggies, we ate them from a can and covered in butter before I even got my plate. I was given soda so young there are pics of me with it in my bottle. I was given whole milk with breakfast, and soda with every other meal. Every. Other. Meal. I was never offered water. Breakfasts were pancakes drowning in butter and syrup. Lunches bologna and cheese, covered in mayo, snacks were packaged cupcakes, ho-hos, ding dongs. Since I could not bring soda to school, on school days I was given regular iced tea drink boxes (lots of sugar). Dinners were adult portions, burgers with bacon and cheese, a scoop of canned veggies and a pile of rice or boxed potatoes and of course soda. Or maybe fried onoin rings with fried chicken...Snack were always like I said, cupcakes, cookies..and were never limited. I grew up where it was perfectly normal to eat a pack of cupcakses while dinner was cooking. I was praised for eating, food was a fix all, and I was told something was "wrong" with people that ate "like birds" i.e. not a lot or ate salads...Low fat was in in the 80s, but my parents NEVER did that and mocked anyone that did or attempted to lose weight.
I lived in a house on a major highway, so I was never allowed out. We only had one car, and my dad had it for work. So until I was 10 (we moved to a house in a neighborhood at that point) I came home and stayed in. I was never allowed out to run around, I was never taught ot ride a bike (taught myself as a teen) I sat all day in school then at home until bed. I was not taken to the park, nothing. Also my mother struggled (still does) with mental illness, and spent many years depressed and would not leave the bed. So she never took my out for walks...Even if we could have afforded for me to join a school sport, it was frowned upon. I was told sports were for people too stupid to do well in class. I see now that my dad had a lot of issues from being bullied in highschool as he was the nonathletic scrawny kid and was bullies by the "jocks" but I didnt know that then. Even to this day he doesn't like "athetic" guys. He has never discouraged me as an adult from running when I got into it, but he did make a few un-nice comments and has never ever said good job or anything positive or encouraging about it, even when I ran my frist 5k, but he always praises me for schooling (I'm taking online course for my BSN).

There is more to childhood obesity than giving kids a few unhealthy foods, its modeled in food AND (lack of ) activity.

Some foods I was never even offered as child, that I tried on my own as an adult and love: Kiwis, strawberries, oatmeal (and now I hoard it lol..from another thread) yogurt, brussel sprouts, spinach, salmon, whole wheat bread (that's all we have in our house)...and other healthy frsh foods. Even if my son refuses to eat any of these foods now as a toddler, he's exposed to them, his parents eat and make them, and we model an active lifestyle...takes a lot more than picky eating to lead to childhood obesity.

[nelie]

Again, I think we can all have different experiences, my mother (beyond feeding me plenty of healthy foods, including fresh veggies and fruits and beyond taking me to multiple doctors/dieticians) also tried to keep me active. I was enrolled in dance classes prior to my parents divorce and afterwards I was allowed to play in the neighborhood. My friends and I were allowed to walk to our school (which was probably .3 miles away) and play. When I got a little older and my mom had a little money saved up, I took swimming lessons at the city pool and had a summer swim pass. I walked to the pool nearly every day during summer (about 1 mile) and I might walk back or my mom might pick me up. Somehow in elementary school, I ran into some kind of track and field team at school and signed up. I was obese at the time so I was a slow runner but I was able to do shot put and I ran when the other kids ran.

And there were certain things that weren't in the house foodwise like juice, mayo, butter, etc. If we had butter in the house, it was for my mom's baking, not eating. If we had milk, it was skim milk. I also had low fat yogurt. We also never ate canned vegetables, partly because I didn't liked canned veggies (my mom loved canned spinach, which was not a passion I shared with her).

As for drinks, my mom, the eternal dieter only had diet sodas to drink or water. I used to drink a lot of water when I was younger but I'd say from a fairly young age, I probably had 2-3 diet sodas per day.

Anyway, I just want to say childhood obesity is complex. I reached 300 lbs at age 14 despite all my mother tried to do.

[sacha]

I don't mean to imply picky eating causes childhood obesity, it's just a bit of humour thrown in there, although I guess rather misplaced...

[GlamourGirl827]

Originally Posted by sacha

I don't mean to imply picky eating causes childhood obesity, it's just a bit of humour thrown in there, although I guess rather misplaced...

Ah...ok. Sorry Its a sensitive subject for me. I don't blame my parents anymore. Id have more than enough time to handle it. But I do still feel pain at how I spent so much of my life so obese and out of shape. I couldnt participate in gym, I was bullied relentlessly and I just hate how they did nothing to address the issue. I also get irked that they never put sun screen on me and I had several severe sunburns as a kid, one that actually left a scar? (weird I know..) but I'm fair skinned and though Ive protected myself since then, I know my risk of skin cancer in increase because of those several burns...anyway my parents were just very irresponsible in many ways, more than I talked about, so its just another area where they failed to, IMO, do their job as parents.

[Munchy]

My mom has always dieted and I am built just like her (plus my grandmother and my daughter!). I started "dieting" very early on, but really just genetically put on weight when I started to mature, and lost one pant size every year in high school, mainly from a semi-starvation diet. We are both in the normal range, but always want to lose the proverbial "last 10 lbs."

My dad was always very slim until he got a belly as he approached his 40's. My older brother is slim like my dad, and my younger brother is like me and my mom - easily gains from a few too many indulgences.

We have always had a pretty healthy household and it has only gotten more and more healthy. After moving in with them post divorce, I introduced a lot of new dishes to my parents. Now we trade nutritious recipes and tricks all the time.

I feel very very strongly about providing my daughter with a good diet, but I'm not too strict with her. I do see that as she's growing, she's definitely going to be built like me, and probably will put on a bit of weight as she nears her first period. It's sometimes hard for me to see that she will likely be a bit chubby, but she's active in tap, jazz, ballet, and martial arts and she eats the healthy foods I provide to her. There is little else I can do - I truly feel that it's in the genes.

[melkhamilton]

No, I do not blame my parents. My mother was overweight off and on and was hypo-thyroid. I inherited hypo-T from her...and the weight issues that come with that. I don't blame her for "giving" me this propensity. She wanted a baby. How can I blame her for that?

She did instill in me a hatred of being "fat." She applauded my first starvation diet at age 11 and every starvation that followed. Can I blame her for making me eating disordered? Not really. She felt helpless and scared and didn't want me to be picked on for being "fat." She thought she was helping me. She was imperfect...like everyone is imperfect.

We ALL have a negative issue or two (or five, or ten ore more) we inherited from someone. There IS no perfect parent...neither functionally, nor biochemically.

We all have stuff to deal with. This is one of my things. Life happens.