1:21 a.m. - 2003-09-04
Food for Thought
I think more about child and family issues at the beginning of the school term. I think it's because I am always hoping that some of the real problems the broader community agrees to maintain tacit silence around will finally be addressed. I found these two articles about health and family issues today. Each questions key unproven social assumptions and attitudes that are prevalent in Western society. In both cases, those beliefs are used as excuses or validation to bully people so identified. Most often the targets are children - they can't fight back. I thought the food for thought presented in both articles was too important not to pass on. I'm glad there are writers and researchers with enough courage to challenge "the world is flat" crowd. I'm tempted to editorialize within the articles, but I'll hold my tongue for now.
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Catherine Ford - Calgary Herald
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
The kids are back in school, ready to face this year's favourite subject - how lazy, inactive, fat and unhealthy they are. Just what every child needs - proof he or she is worthless.
That's the real message given by Learning Minister Lyle Oberg in his promise of a mandatory 30-minute daily physical education component in schools. That's the real message given by doctors, nutritionists and other health professionals in their relentless focus on fat kids. That's how kids interpret it. They haven't yet had the experience to accept and deal with paradox. To them, it's personal.
Children believe what they see and hear. And what they hear are self-righteous adults - many of whom they see are fat, inactive and unhealthy - clucking away about the state of their bodies.
Children make the logical conclusion - they are somehow to blame. They are to blame like they are at fault for their parents getting divorced or for tragedy befalling a friend.
Shame on us for doing this to them, for exacerbating the focus on a child's appearance and masquerading it as a concern for their health.
The first sinner is Oberg, who talks about mandatory exercise in schools. That the voters in Alberta would actually let him get away with the great lie that it is possible to institute a half-hour of physical education into the school day without additional resources is infuriating. Who is he kidding? It isn't even a new idea - I was in elementary school in the 1950s and pompous adults were even then advocating daily exercise in schools. Nothing came of that, either.
We are so concerned about childhood obesity we seek easy answers. Schools have a tough time doing their real job without doing yours.
But well-meaning, back-to-school advice doled out in gratuitous servings sounds good.
It gives the provincial government, school trustees, doctors and social workers the idea they're actually working to solve the problem of childhood obesity.
"The quickest way to solve the "problem" of fat kids? Leave them alone. Shut up about their weight. Take the pop, candy and potato chip vending machines out of the schools. Tax the fast-food industry. Make eating healthy foods less expensive than eating a Big Mac and fries. Put a stop to the notion that quantity is synonymous with value.
American and French scientists have finally solved the paradox how people who eat butter and drink red wine can be thinner and healthier than health-obsessed Americans. Simple -- they eat less.
It's no more exotic than that, as anyone who has ever faced the monstrous portions that pass for a "regular" meal in any American chain restaurant can attest.
If adults are serious about solving childhood obesity, first look in the mirror and check your own body mass index. Take off that extra 10 pounds.
Take a critical look at the people ladling out advice. Kids aren't blind.
Fat children know they're fat. Sometimes they choose to stay that way for the simplest reason: negative attention is better than no attention at all.
Children are love and attention sponges - they need large helpings of the uncritical variety in order to learn, by patterning, that they are worthwhile, valuable and secure. In the absence of grown-up parents capable of such love, kids will take what they can get.
In her 1981 study entitled The Secret Lives of Fat People, social worker Mildred Klingman put it succinctly: "Any attention - even yelling - is better than none."
Under the heading, Raising Fat Children to be Fat People, she writes: "The parents exercise control by a system of rewards and punishments. The most common situation is having to eat food you dislike in order to be rewarded with dessert."
Food becomes a reward and a solace. Putting your kid on a diet thus becomes a denial of love.
There is also the other side: "Children catch on very quickly to the idea that overeating is an easy way to express their anger at their parents. Food is quiet and not perceived as being hostile. The fat child who gets disapproval from her parents for being fat can strike back very simply just by staying fat," writes Klingman.
To raise a generation of obese adults, keep right on ragging on kids about their weight.
� Copyright 2003 Calgary Herald
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I think this item from my daily health newsletter from gophercentral, also requires careful consideration. Often the assumptions articulated in the article are the basis upon which social policy and the funding for essential programs in health, education and family support are decided. These programs are often set up to ensure the world view used is validated. It is the same tactic that was used to ensure the arguments of the "inferior" sex or "inferior" race stereotype could not be challenged. Set people up to fail. Once certain social practices were discontinued - you know segregation and not allowing women in the workplace - the truth emerged.
"Commonly made claims about changes in family and other intimate relations are not supported by actual research, British scientists argue. Instead, accounts of present-day personal relations seem to be more a reflection of ideological stances. Today's theorists tend to emphasize either family breakdown and moral decline, or transformation and democratization. The more negative account of family change appeals to traditionalist, conservative interpretations, while liberals favor the more positive version.
But statistical research supports a third perspective: there has been little substantial change in the way people relate to one another, and individuals continue to place great importance on personal ties and obligations. Though demographic data show an increased diversity of living arrangements, such as divorcees, lone parents and step-families, the statistics also demonstrate an enduring continuity of traditional ties, with the majority of families still composed of heterosexual couples. This finding is "an counter-balance to dominant and unsubstantiated claims of family break-down or greater individual freedom," the researchers said."
I'll climb back up on my soapbox tomorrow.
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