Parents have a major role in the mental and physical shaping of their children. Many believe that the parents of children who are immensely overweight should be blamed and penalized for this. In this essay, while I will acknowledge that individuals are responsible to educate children about a healthy diet, I will strongly disagree the above notion because children often are influenced to overeat by their peers, not parents, and other times they have genes that cause obesity despite a healthy lifestyle.
Parent should teach their children to differentiate between food full of nutrients and junk food. However, while a lot of them do this, their children tend to be encouraged by their friends in school to indulge in unhealthy meals. This pressure is general beyond a child’s ability to resist, and frequent such peer pressure towards excessive unhealthy consumption results in obesity. For example, majority school canteens offer fat rich food, and it is reported that these canteens are hang out spots for several student groups. Since parents have no control over this, because many such meals are unsupervised and eaten outside home, the burden of this cannot fall on them.
Additionally, children suffer from obesity due to genetics that are both out of the control of the child and their parents. This is because a person’s genes cannot be altered by any known medical treatment, which means guardians cannot suppress the genetic effects to avoid their child gaining weight. For instance, a mother having underlying diabetes is going to pass it to her infant during delivery, and in the future, this type 1 diabetes is almost certain to result in unwanted weight gain despite any efforts to maintain it.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that guardians have to impart knowledge about healthy eating habits to their dependent children, but there are external factors such as eating under peer influence and genes leading to weight gain. Therefore, the blame cannot be only directed to parents.