Abstract
To examine how urban parents' perceptions of healthy infant size and growth relate to objective weight-for-length percentiles of their children, parents of 222 (69% minority) 6- to 27-month-old infants were surveyed. In all, 41% of parents said growth charts had never been explained to them, and 31% were not confident they understood the meaning of chart percentiles. A total of 20% of parents preferred their child weigh ≥75th percentile, and these children had higher mean weight-for-length percentiles than their peers (P =.05). Similarly, 37% of parents agreed that "a chubby baby is a healthy baby," and these children had higher mean weight-for-length percentiles than others in the cohort ( P =.02). Additionally, 58% of parents ranked a growth curve with consistent growth at the 10th percentile as the "least healthy" of 6 infant growth curves. Growth charts are not consistently explained to or understood by urban parents, and many prefer early life growth patterns associated with later obesity.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 698-703 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Clinical Pediatrics |
Volume | 50 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 2011 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health