1. Distribution and disavowal: Managing the parental stigma of Children's weight and weight loss.
- Author
-
Davis, Jenny L., Goar, Carla, Manago, Bianca, and Reidinger, Bobbi
- Subjects
- *
BODY weight , *DENIAL (Psychology) , *ETHICS , *INTERVIEWING , *PARENT-child relationships , *SELF-perception , *SOCIAL stigma , *WEIGHT loss , *WEIGHT gain , *SOCIAL support , *PARENT attitudes , *ATTITUDES toward obesity - Abstract
Abstract Parents who seek weight loss treatment for their children find themselves pulled between double moral burdens. Blamed and shamed for the weight itself while culpable for the psychological effects of encouraging weight loss, parental stigma comes from multiple directions. Through interviews with parents who send their children to weight loss camps (N = 47), we ask: how do parents maintain a moral sense of self? We show that parents distribute moral blame for their children's weight and disavow moral blame for encouraging weight loss. We further interrogate how parents' own weight status informs moral management strategies. We find parents' bodies and biographies affect the ways distribution and disavowal take form. Parents with self-identified weight problems internalize significant self-blame for children's weight gain, while parents without personal weight problems more freely allocate blame to outside actors and factors. However, when disavowing the effects of encouraging weight loss, parents with current or past weight issues rely on a shared experience that is unavailable to their slender counterparts. Our findings elucidate the moral tensions of parents who embark on weight loss intervention for their children while highlighting the interplay between primary and associative moral stigma in a family context. Highlights • Parents who seek weight loss treatment for their children face double moral burdens. • Parents distribute blame for children's high body weight. • Parents disavow blame for psychological harm from weight loss intervention. • Parents' weight status affects how they manage moral stigma. • Shared stigma between parent and child is both a liability and an asset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
- Full Text
- View/download PDF