Background: Overweight and obesity in children are public health problems. Understanding the risk factors is essential in order to develop effective interventions. Besides the more classical known risk factors, the impact of stress either caused by major life events or by repetitive daily hassles has been proposed to be a more novel important risk factor. Social support is often considered a protective factor concerning the negative effects of stress.
Objectives: This cross-­‐sectional study aimed at comparing normal weight and overweight/obese children with regards to their stress exposure (number of stressful major life events and chronic daily hassles), their stress perception, and the level of social support
Methods: For this part of the study, 50 normal weight and overweight/obese children aged 7 to 10 years old were recruited. Upon arrival, anthropometric measures of children were taken while parents filled out questionnaires about family major life events (including recent life events and early separation), their perceived stress, chronic daily hassles (including socioeconomic status, migrant status, parental worries and parenting practices), and their social support.
Results: There were no group differences with regards to serious life events, recent life events or early separation (all p=NS). In contrast, chronic daily hassles in the form of lower socioeconomic, migrant status and certain unfavourable parenting practices such as corporal punishment occurred more frequently in overweight/obese children than in normal weight children (all p ≤0.06) and parents of overweight/obese children had a tendency to be more worried (p=0.08). Finally, there was no difference in social support between the two groups.
Conclusion: In this more clinical sample of children, we found no differences in major life events or social support between normal weight and overweight/obese children, but the latter experienced more chronic daily hassles.
Our results highlight the importance and influence of a child's environment on his weight and thus show that actions should be undertaken to treat childhood obesity on different levels.
Further research is needed to study the interplay of the determinants influencing childhood overweight in a more epidemiological setting.