If your children are fat, you are failing as a mother

Most Americans are overweight and don't see anything wrong with that. As weights have gone up, so have perceptions of being "ideal," with the ideals getting fatter and fatter and fatter …. and people reporting themselves to be just dandy fine with the situation.

Men's average ideal weight is up 14 pounds since Gallup first measured it in 1990, and their average actual weight is up 16 pounds. Women's average ideal weight is up 11 pounds since 1990, and their average actual weight is up 14 pounds. Basically, over the past two decades people have consistently said they wanted to lose about 10 to 15 pounds off their current weight to achieve their ideal weight.

It's kind of shocking to take a look at life insurance tables from the past, and look at what ideal weights USED to be. At 5'6 and 138 pounds this morning, I have a BMI of 22.3, and I am in the 14th percentile for weight for American women (I'm not American but let's go with it, for the sake of argument). That means 86% of women weigh more than I do, and quite frankly, I'm a little on the heavy side these days.

According to the Devine formula, created in 1975, I should be 131 pounds. Medical recommendations put my weight safely as low as 118 pounds. The Metropolitan Life tables suggest a weight somewhere between 122 – 136 pounds, and even though part of me is screaming BULLSHIT, in actual fact, those weights are kinda perfect. I am at least five pounds over my ideal weight, and I DO pay attention and try to manage my waistline, but it's easy to eye up cookies and think, ah hell, 14th percentile! Just one cookie won't kill ya!

And it won't, but it's a slippery slope. The last thing anyone should be doing is comparing their weights to the people around them because EVERYONE ELSE IS FRICKING FAT! Being overweight is a CHOICE for most people. Some people have medical problems and some people are just naturally predisposed to be fat, but those people are genetically abnormal and by definition, not very common! And make no mistake, I firmly support the right of every damn grown up to weigh whatever the hell they want (it's your ass, and you can be as gross as you want to), but where I get really judgy and b***hy is when CHILDREN are made fat by the adults around them.

And by adults, I mean mothers. Yeah, ain't no way around that one. It's mama's job to feed her children. It starts with breastfeeding and if you are doing a good job as a mother, you are PRESENT and preparing, serving and promoting healthy nutritious food is your JOB.

According to kidshealth.org, one in three American children are overweight. That's just fricking terrible. Children who are overweight are learning deeply ingrained habits about eating that are going to be so very hard to break when they reach adulthood, and that's just not fair.

I'll take a moment here to acknowledge that lots of moms MUST work because they did not make choices that would allow them to be proper mothers and went ahead and brought kids into shitty financial, emotional and marital circumstances. You can thank older women for lying about the importance of motherhood and letting younger women frick themselves over, but at the end of the day, those children exist and being a lazy, tired b***h is no excuse for tossing a frozen pizza at your fat, unhappy kid.

The idea that good food is too expensive is complete and utter bullshit. Yeah, truffle oil and filet mignon is expensive. Rice and beans are not. What they take is lots of time to prepare and exhausted, guilt-ridden mothers just can't be fricking bothered when McDonald's is so much easier. The idea that life should be EASY is what propels women to buy processed, sugar and fat-laden food and give it their children who will happily consume it because they're CHILDREN and will eat marshmallows and jelly beans for dinner if you let them.

I have an enormous amount of sympathy for women who bought the lie that being self-reliant and earning money and beating the shit out of men in the job market would be the path to fulfillment and enlightenment. It's a pervasive story, and completely false. Most women realize AFTER the baby has arrived that going back to work and abandoning their infants to strangers is fricking terrible. But they're screwed. How you compound such poor judgement by refusing to do the very LITTLE you can do (feed your child!) is beyond my powers of comprehension.

Yeah, you're tired. So what? If you have to stay up an extra hour to prepare healthy food for your children, then DO IT. Stop whining and looking for someone to blame. If you MUST blame someone, find a mirror. And for the love of god, stop taking it out on your children! Forcing them to go through life fat is a cruelty no child should face.

And since you're preparing healthy food for your children, how about you put down that bag of chips and eat some yourself? Being fat is a choice. Make a better one.

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  1. 11 years ago
    Paprika

    The truth of it is, American women need to *work out*. As in, hit the gym, lift weights, push themselves. While women need not aspire to the low body fat percentages that are easily reached by men, they certainly have a duty to build strength and muscle tone as much as they can.

    I personally work out five days a week. Only two to three of those days are spent at the gym lifting weights, not to build muscle, but to stay strong and keep tone. I have no illusions about challenging my male counterparts, after all. All the same, it's not only a woman's, but a parent's duty, to remain in tip-top shape to assure that any challenges posed by a risk to the child can be met by the parent! One need not be ‘the incredible hulk', but if your kid is in danger, you have to be able to handle the situation; whether it's a child stuck trapped under a heavy object, inside a burning building, or being threatened by an unsavory character. A person who can't handle any of those basic threats can't handle parenthood. Hell, what are you going to do if you personally are faced with those threats? Defend yourself and what's yours, or you may as well kill your useless self. God.

    I'm fairly liberal in some senses when it comes to social policy, but I cannot tolerate fatness (save for pre-existing medical conditions that are difficult to overcome-I have *some* heart). As far as I'm concerned, if you're a family person, you'd better be lean and fricking mean. Otherwise, don't bother reproducing. It's just fricking cruel to the pathetic offspring you're almost guaranteed to raise.

  2. 11 years ago
    Joseph

    "The idea that good food is too expensive is complete and utter bullshit. Yeah, truffle oil and filet mignon is expensive. Rice and beans are not. What they take is lots of time to prepare and exhausted, guilt-ridden mothers just can't be fricking bothered when McDonald's is so much easier. The idea that life should be EASY is what propels women to buy processed, sugar and fat-laden food and give it their children who will happily consume it because they're CHILDREN and will eat marshmallows and jelly beans for dinner if you let them."

    How so very true!

    I commented earlier on another article about this, but one thing we (GF and I) have noticed is that ever since we started eating healthy… doesnt mean we eat boring. Many healthy meals can be fabulous, but do actually require work into it. No more 5-minute quicky meals from some box that has way too many calories… but veggie chili with lean beef, fresh chopped onions, bell peppers, zuchini, squash, chopped tomatoes with chili powder, etc… leaves you with a flavorful meal thats only 398 calories a serving (1.5 cups, which is quite a bit).

    Its one thing we have realized that you can eat healthy and cheap, it requires alot more preperation, time, and effort… but its something we enjoy.

    And yes, I mostly do the cooking out of my choice, because I have always enjoyed it =) (though the gf takes over on days I work =))

  3. 10 years ago
    Monica Stewart

    for someone who is overweight, and doesn't have a medical problem i can easily without a doubt say that it is not a choice. I don't just wake up and say "Hey i think my goal this week is to gain 5lbs". No one wants to be fat, and for someone who has experienced the daily struggles such as eating in public from shopping in stores i can't see why anyone would choose to be fat. When im eating a pizza with friends my initial thought is "Man this pizza is good" not "YAY!! IM GETTING FAT!!! BEING FAT IS NOT A CHOICE. So instead of being judgmental without knowing what anyone has gone through, stop trying to put others down. Because believe it or not a lot of overweight people that you see walking around are actually trying to loose weight but its pretty difficult to continue when you are constantly being bombarded with negative comments. Even though obesity is a problem and becoming an epidemic that gives you no right to be disrespectful.

  4. 9 years ago
    Jack Strawb

    I'll go a little further than you: Preparing tasty, nourishing meals is not difficult or time consuming, especially if you bring your kids into it or, with a small child, put them in the pen near you while you work.

    Do people really not know they can make and freeze five pounds of vegetable rich spaghetti sauce with little labor? Play word or imagination games with your kid at the table with you while you cut up vegetables if they're too small to use a knife, or direct them in putting a puzzle together, or those word-puzzles where you have to figure out the nationalities of the various smokers and the color and kind of the houses they live in.

    Hell, unless someone is completely broke they can buy bags of already cut up, washed vegetables at most supermarkets. Sugar free cereals with vanilla flavored rice milk. Kids love it. Salads are easy to make. Fruit in its own juices, no sugar added, right out of the jar or can. Peanuts in the shell (which kids love), nuts in the shell if you can afford them. Apples. Applesauce with no sugar added. Sliced or whole turkey. Chicken. Take the skin off yourself or get the meat guy at the supermarket to skin a chicken or two. Learn to use a wok (in one sitting) and stir fry meats or fish and vegetables. Broil fish in a few minutes. Rice, white or ideally brown. I mean, it's so easy it's difficult to stop. I can even come up with a lot of microwave versions of these.

    If you have just an ordinary budget you really have to be an idiot not to feed your kids well, and with a calorie intake that will keep them fit, energetic, and slim. The way kids should be. .

  5. 9 years ago
    cslite

    It IS a choice. Only you decide to put things into your body that make you fat. You sound like your blaming others instead of taking
    responsibility for yourself.

  6. 9 years ago
    julian

    refreshing. americans need to learn how to not settle for mediocrity. from our politicians, companies, selves… it nice to see someone has the strength to reclaim such an important part of having a good life. a desire to have a fit body is NOT SHALLOW, it is like wanting a RUNNING CAR

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