Mothers of non-Western background have notions that promote overweight children more often than ethnic Dutch mothers. for example they often see sweet milk-drink as a good replacement for milk. Their children rarely eat breakfast and they have a TV in their room twice as often as ethnic Dutch kids.
This according to a scientific study of several doctors led by Magda Boere-Boonekamp of UMC Utrecht. The study was published in the Dutch Journal of Medicine (Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde)
Using thirty questions the doctors studied whether there was a relationship between excess weight by children and the background of their parents.
Relatively many overweight children are in one of four groups: mothers with a low education level, mothers on benefits, overweight mothers and non-Western mothers.
A fifth of non-Western mothers gives their children a bag of chips everyday, compared to a tenth of ethnic dutch mothers. Three of five non-Western mothers often reward their children with something sweet, compared to two fifths of the other 390 mothers who answered the questions.
Non-Western immigrants especially do not think it is so important that their children exercise. 44% of them say that children should go out everyday in the winter, compared to 75% of the other mothers. They say twice as often that they "don't have time to go outside with my child."
The study shows that one in seven children till the age of four is overweight. The number of overweight children is quickly increasing. For example, in 1980 6% of the children aged 4-15 were overweight, compared to 15% last year.
Source: NRC (Dutch)
See also: Study page (Dutch)
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