Grown ups avoid weighty topics
Many parents don’t speak to their children about diets
Discussing weightrelated subjects around their children is something most parents avoid, new research has found. As part of their ongoing mission to help women feel like themselves again, the body confidence experts at www.MyJuniper.co.uk have conducted research looking into how many parents in the UK would prefer both diet and weight-related topics to not be spoken about around their children.
The team conducted a study of 2,250 UK parents, who all have children under the age of 18, to find out their thoughts.
When asked whether they discuss diets or weight-related topics with their children, almost two thirds of parents said that they don’t directly speak to their children about diets or weight-related topics at all (65 per cent). Further from this, just over a tenth of parents said that they won’t allow discussions of diets or weight-related topics to take place around their children (11 per cent).
When asked why parents don’t discuss diets or weightrelated topics around their children, the most common reasons were found to be:
1. To promote a healthy body image – 68 per cent
2. So that they don’t get obsessed about the way their body
looks – 55 per cent
3. To prevent them developing an eating disorder – 39 per cent
4. To avoid discussion of negative body image – 27 per cent
5. So that they don’t feel pressure around food – 18 per cent
Following on from this, more than four fifths of parents said that they prefer to give their children regular compliments, including compliments about their body (86 per cent), with almost half of these parents saying that they complement their children daily (49 per cent).
Furthermore, out of the parents who said that they do speak to their children about weight and diets, the majority of them only started speaking to their children about the topic once they reached at least 15 years of age (81 per cent), with many believing that discussions at this age won’t cause any mental or physical damage as a result (71 per cent).
Louise Bula, Dietien at www. MyJuniper.co.uk, said: “The discussion about diets and weight must always be handled with great sensitivity as you never know what lasting damage you could cause when approaching these topics. That being said, it’s so great to hear that most parents are avoiding these sensitive topics around their children, with so many not even having these conversations when their child is in earshot.”