More children lead to obesity in parents

Adding more children to your family may mean adding more inches to your waistline. According to a new research, the risk of obesity increases incrementally with every additional child in the family. U.S. researchers found that middle-aged parents with larger families are more likely to be obese than parents with smaller families. Women who bear more children tend to gain more weight. The same goes for the fathers as well. Researchers from the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina found that eating habits are the main culprit behind the relationship between kids and parental obesity. Parents have less time for preparing healthy meals, less time for sitting down and less time for exercise and physical activity when more children are around. Being conscious about the good effects of these activities can prevent the waistline from growing. Healthy eating and being physically active can be a challenge for the whole family rather than for an individual. It is also important to model good behaviour in children, especially in the context of the increasing prevalence of childhood obesity. In the study the researchers reviewed information collected from 9046 men and women between the ages of 40 and 70. Participants indicated their weights and heights, and how many children they had. The investigators found that for every new child added to a household, a mother's risk of obesity increased by 7 per cent. Each additional child upped men's risk of obesity by around 4 percent. Along with changes in eating habits that often come with the birth of a new child, pregnancy is accompanied by physiological and hormonal changes in women, which may increase their risk of carrying extra weight with each extra child.