If You Have A Fat Baby You Can Totally Blame Lazy Old Grandma
The study – published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology – compared the children’s weights, childcare arrangements and family backgrounds.
They found that children who were mainly looked after by their grandparents were 22 per cent more likely to be overweight or obese than those who stayed with their parents or were babysat by friends or neighbours.
Research: Children who were mainly looked after by their grandparents were 22 per cent more likely to be overweight or obese than those who stayed with their parents or were babysat by friends or neighbours
Dr Antti Tanskanen, from the University of Helsinki, said traditionally grandparents – and particularly grandmothers – would boost children’s survival chances by giving them more food.
He said their natural instinct is to perform the same role now – and they may be inadvertently overfeeding children.
”˜Results show that children who were cared for mainly by their grandmothers between the ages of nine months and three years were more likely overweight at age three than children who were cared for by their parents.’ He said.
It seems a simple solution would be to either ask Grandma to stop feeding your kids cans of frosting or maybe only let your kids have chocolate cake with cake with extra cake on top when they are with grandma. I don’t know, I would pretty much kill to have a grandparent either alive or close by so they could watch my kids so I think the last thing I would be concerned about is them making them a bit chubby. It seems like a small trade off to have safe, affordable (Usually free!) childcare in exchange for a little baby fat.
(Photo: Michael C. Gray/shutterstock)