‘I Think It Will Be Like This Forever’: How Family Narratives Affect Participation in a Childhood Weight Management Intervention

Dan Grabowski,Anne Martine Aaberg Mortil,Maj-Britt Lundsgaard Hansen,Grete Katrine Teilmann,Birgitte Højgaard Roikjer,Didde Hoeeg

doi:10.3390/socsci10050175

Dan Grabowski, Anne Martine Aaberg Mortil + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10050175

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Abstract

The family represents the cause of as well as the solution to childhood overweight in many family-based childhood weight management interventions. Involving the family also entails involving the individual family members’ experiences with, attitudes towards, and understandings of obesity. This study explores how families with life-long experiences of overweight manage and experience a family-based childhood weight management intervention in Northern Zealand in Denmark. The analysis is focused on family narratives and their temporal character. The families’ narratives about overweight and past weight management interventions are crucial to how they understand and manage the present intervention. Additionally, the families expect the focus on weight management to continue to be a constant part of their everyday life. The paper concludes that the understanding of weight management in interventions should take its point of departure in the life-world, which the individual family creates through members’ narratives about overweight.

Highlights

The WHO frames childhood obesity as one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century (WHO 2018)
We focus on how families narrate overweight as a shared family problem and how these narratives influence the experience and the management of the intervention
We conclude that it is the families’ own narratives and their collective perceptions of temporal meaning that structure their own implementation of the weight management intervention

Summary

Introduction

The WHO frames childhood obesity as one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century (WHO 2018). Interventions are often directed at the whole family. In recent Cochrane reviews on interventions to reduce childhood overweight and obesity, the majority of trials included parents or family members (Mead et al 2017; Oude Luttikhuis et al.2009). These recent reviews all conclude that family-based interventions lead to only small decreases in children’s weight Families’ adherence to a family-based childhood obesity intervention: A qualitative study on perceptions of authenticity.

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