Department of Global Health Promotion, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan.
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Pediatr Obes. 2020 Sep;15(9):e12652. doi: 10.1111/ijpo.12652. Epub 2020 May 1.
Despite the increasing trend of paternal engagement in caregiving, fathers remain underrepresented in studies on parenting and childhood obesity.
This study examined the association between father involvement in caregiving and child's weight status within a longitudinal dataset from Japan.
The data were obtained from a population-based cohort study in Japan (N = 29 584). The association between father's involvement in child caregiving (age 18 months) on the weight status of the same children at age 3.5 years was examined by logistic regression and linear regression analysis. Furthermore, we checked the interaction between maternal employment & father involvement by creating four mutually exclusive groups of families.
Children whose fathers were highly involved in caregiving were less likely to be overweight (OR = 0.90, 95% CI, 0.85-0.96). Employed mothers with high paternal involvement in caregiving were 30% less likely to have children with overweight or obesity compared to those with low paternal involvement (95% CI, 0.55-0.90).
Father involvement in caregiving is associated with the development of overweight or obesity in early childhood, and may also modify the association between maternal employment and child's weight status. Social policies to support shared child-rearing such as expanding paid parental leave could help families to raise children with healthy weight.
尽管父亲在照顾子女方面的参与度呈上升趋势，但在育儿和儿童肥胖研究中，父亲的代表性仍然不足。
本研究在来自日本的纵向数据集内，检验了父亲在照顾子女方面的参与程度与儿童体重状况之间的关系。
该数据来自日本一项基于人群的队列研究（N=29584）。通过逻辑回归和线性回归分析，检验了父亲在子女 18 个月时参与照顾与同一儿童在 3.5 岁时的体重状况之间的关联。此外，我们通过创建四个相互排斥的家庭群体，检查了母亲就业与父亲参与之间的相互作用。
父亲高度参与照顾的儿童超重的可能性较低（OR=0.90，95%CI，0.85-0.96）。与父亲参与度较低的家庭相比，父亲高度参与照顾且母亲就业的家庭中，儿童超重或肥胖的比例低 30%（95%CI，0.55-0.90）。
父亲在照顾子女方面的参与与儿童早期超重或肥胖的发展有关，并且可能会改变母亲就业与儿童体重状况之间的关联。支持共同育儿的社会政策，如扩大带薪育儿假，可能有助于家庭培养体重健康的儿童。
