Which do YOU think is to blame for the epidemic of childhood obesity in America -- overly strict parents who monitor their children's food intake religiously, or parents who are too lazy and permissive to say "No, you can NOT have that 4th Snickers bar before dinner. Now get your butt off the couch and go outside and play"?
There was once a time when people thought if you were too strict with a child and never let them have any sweets, they would grow up to rebel and would get fat. So parents started relaxing and letting kids eat more of what they wanted rather than taking the "clean your plate" approach to mealtimes.
But then maybe that more permissive approach backfired too... our national addiction to fast food and junk food and sugar, coupled with too much TV and video games and not enough physical activity, has manifested in a wave of unhealthy youngsters. Watch any of the Super Nanny or Nanny 911 shows and there's almost always an issue with the kids bouncing off the walls from too much sugar. And now there's a new program on TLC called "Honey, We're Killing the Kids" where a doctor works with a family that needs new "rules" about diet and exercise (and often about how to relate better to one another). These programs would suggest that the permissiveness is even worse than being too strict when it comes to what parents allow their children to eat.
Or is it? The pendulum is now swinging the other way: a study from the Boston University of Medicine claims that strict mothers are more than 5 times likely to end up with pudgy kids than mothers who had rules but who knew how to be flexible.
The same study also claims that the permissive mothers were twice as likely to end up with fatter children than the flexible rule-setting moms.
I am not a mother, but if I WERE a mother, this kind of back-and-forth scientific opinion would be enough to make me want to strangle anyone with a lab coat and a clipboard. Of course, it stands to reason that moderation is always best and that going to extremes usually backfires -- that's as true of parenting as it is of anything else in life.
Why do we need study after study to tell us what we already know? Do these studies make us do the right thing? I doubt it... I think they just add to our mental clutter and confusion, especially when every study that comes out seem to contradict the last ones.
It's like the boy who cried "Wolf!" -- no one took HIM seriously, and look what happened to him. Eaten. And probably with a super-sized side of fries and an extra-large Slurpee.
