For the study, researchers with the National Institutes of Health’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development examined health data compiled in a previous study which enrolled more than 5,000 mothers. For the initial study, parents were asked to fill out developmental questionnaires on the children’s performance after completing certain activities with their children. The children were assessed at four months of age and reassessed six more times through age three.
A new analysis of the questionnaires found children of obese mothers were nearly 70 percent more likely to fail the tests of fine motor skill by age three and children of obese fathers were more likely to fail the questionnaires’ social domain assessment in the same time frame. Children of two obese parents were nearly three times more likely to fail the assessment’s problem solving section by age 3.
“The previous U.S. studies in this area have focused on the mothers’ pre- and post-pregnancy weight,” said Edwina Yeung, PhD, the study’s first author and an investigator in NICHD’s Division of Intramural Population Health Research. “Our study is one of the few that also includes information about fathers, and our results suggest that dad’s weight also has significant influence on child development.”
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