Another Reason Not to Have Children
If they’re fat, they could be taken away from me.
The News said that doctors are “calling for the government to enact stricter child protection laws and take action against the parents of obese children under 12” and that they should be considered guilty of neglect.
I mean, you all knew we were already moving in that direction, right? Now somebody’s come right out and said this should be policy. In Scotland, granted, but that doesn’t comfort me. I trust that Americans won’t let anyone else be Number One in Fatphobia for long.
What I find most galling is this quote from the doctor who’s suggesting that obesity be considered “parental neglect”:
I would say that having a child who is overweight poses as much a danger to their health as a child who is suffering malnutrition, or arguably more risk.
That is just so stunningly, offensively (on so many levels) wrong, I don’t even know where to begin. Being overweight is an arguably greater risk than starving? Are you fucking kidding me?
Apart from that bit of jaw-droppingly bad science, Sandy sums up the big pile of wrong better than I could:
We would need no other evidence of just how strong the social morality of health and wellness has become than if healthcare professionals and consumers fail to resist these unsound measures en masse. The soundest research for more than half a century has shown that obesity is not caused by “unhealthy” eating or sloth; that fat and thin children and adults eat and act no differently — and not nearly as badly as is being sold in media; that our children have never been healthier; and that no childhood obesity intervention has ever been able to show long-term effectiveness, only harm. The new guidelines for managing weights, diets and activities of U.S. children is a turning point in our country — a test of science over beliefs and agendas.
I’m seriously trying not to cry about this one.
You’re trying not to cry? You’re way ahead of me, Kate. I’m trying not to slash my goddamn wrists about everything they’re doing to fat kids these days. I feel so totally hopeless and helpless to stop any of it.
I hear ya, Meowser.
Can we get a group of people up to Torquay to protest at the conference, or put together a submission to the BMA or ….perhaps kidnap that particular doctor and play an audiobook of Campos to him until he gets it??
IF this ever happened, the thing to do as a group would be to get a digital camera and photograph every meal you make for the child and document it, and you’d have years worth of evidence for the court battle.
I am so, so disturbed by this that I can hardly function. I mean it. Ever since Sandy started posting about this I’ve been in this complete twilight zone of anger and fear. I have a beautiful three-year-old son. As a family, we eat well and try to make movement a part of our daily life. But the fact is that the child of two fat parents has about as much chance of being skinny as the child of two short people has of being tall. And given that both his parents are the children of fat parents, well, it just doesn’t seem possible that his “normal” weight is going to last.
I actually wrote to Sandy today. I have to DO something about this. I have spent the last five months pitching stories about the sham of childhood obesity to major publications (I’m a writer with national clips) and I haven’t gotten a single response. Nada.
I am in despair. And it double sucks because I can’t concentrate on anything, including the work that I have due tomorrow.
….perhaps kidnap that particular doctor and play an audiobook of Campos to him until he gets it??
That one gets my vote.
And the thing that scares me is, even if you did document every fucking meal you ever made for your child, they’d just say, “You’re lying. You must have taken that picture right before you handed him a Big Mac.”
Gah, Nicole, I hear you. I’m so sorry. All I can say is, keep fighting the good fight. And let me know what Sandy says.
That’s exactly what they do say the times fat kids have been criminalized here in the US. They’ve been exceptional cases thus far, but the venomous nature of the anti-fat campaigns make it a legitimate worry that they’d be extended. The times it has been used have been heart-breaking. Its such an easy thing for politicians to do but I’m not sure any step taken in the anti-fat hysteria could be more wrong that criminalizing fat children.
Good gods! Did he really say that a starving child is at less risk than an overweight child? From what? These people need some anti-psychotic medications for sure!
Just a note: I got a lovely, thoughtful response from Sandy a few minutes ago. I will post some of her ideas later, if that’s OK.
Add more depression to the mix. Evidently, the feds are considering approving a drug called Zimulti that has shown to decrease the pleasure receptors in the brain- so fatties don’t enjoy eating. Oh- and the unpleasant side of effect of depression… but that’s okay, since we all clearly need to be depressed more about how fat we are…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070613/ap_on_he_me/obesity_drug_5;_ylt=AnJk0QhGIlRXESWPje9tY.oE1vAI
Nicole, sure, if Sandy doesn’t mind you posting it here, I’d love to see it.
Divajean, yeah, I blogged about that yesterday. Zimulti will be the U.S. name for Acomplia. Grrrrrr.
This is maddening. You’ve got a great blog here and what pisses me off if that we’ll let kids go back to abusive(physically, verbally, sexually) parents, but condemn the parents for this, it’s disgusting.
I expect all hell to break lose. Politicians were shocked to find that online gamblers could form an effective pressure group if their hobby was threatened. That’s nothing compared to what the politicians will get from the parents of fat and potentially fat children.
I keep thinking about the identical-twin photos. Of all those hundreds of sets of adult twins, was there a single set where one twin was thin and one was fat? Was there even a set where there was any significant difference in the BMI between the twins? That ought to tell any thinking person that weight for the vast majority of people is about GENETICS GENETICS GENETICS, first and foremost, since you can’t tell me that all those twins, having lived apart for years, have exactly the same daily calorie intake and output.
But since when do government officials think, especially when $$$$$ and lots of it is involved? Sandy is right, this is about selling more pills and more medical equipment first and foremost, and nobody is going to convince me otherwise.
As someone who works in social services, I am mostly aghast that someone would think this isn’t a gigantic waste of already overburned child protection agencies.
There are kids out there who get burned with cigarettes, whose parents and caregivers punch them and tie them up and scald them and break their bones and hand them over to strangers to be victimized again and again.
So, by all means, waste the time of social workers with this rot and maybe let some of those kids who are actually in danger die. Genius!
So sad and frustrating. Also brought to mind the works of child psychologist Alice Miller, who writes about the effects of harsh attitudes and treatment of children on the justification that it’s for their own “good.” Needless to say, it’s most often not.
Of course, the correlation of heart disease and diabetes with fat couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that fat people live under seige every moment of their lives, could it?
All of these official concern trolls so conveniently overlook the fact that being severely underweight is demonstrably dangerous and yet the fat hysteria is leading to eating disorders in ever younger children.
The thing that bothers me most is that when we do actually end up with a generation that is shorter, less intelligent, and sicker, it will be attributed to obesity rather than the malnutrition caused by fat hysteria. It makes me despair.