By Anne Harding
The findings suggest "optimal and healthy weight may be another potential benefit from avoiding neglect," Dr. Robert Whitaker of Temple University in Philadelphia, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.
Research has linked maltreatment in childhood to obesity in adulthood, Whitaker and his team report in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect. To investigate how maltreatment might affect children's likelihood of being obese, they looked at 2 412 children, who were three years old, born in 20 US cities. The children were participating in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study.
The researchers found that 18 percent of the children were obese. Based on parent reports and interviews, 11 percent of the children had experienced neglect, 84 percent had received some type of corporal punishment, and 93 percent had experienced psychological aggression.
The most common type of corporal punishment consisted of spanking the child's bottom or slapping his or her hand, arm or leg, while psychological aggression most frequently involved yelling, shouting or screaming at the child or threatening to hit the child without actually doing so.
Parents who reported neglecting their child said, for example, that they had been too caught up in their own problems to be emotionally responsive to their child; were unable to bring their child to the doctor when he or she needed care; or had to leave the child alone when he or she needed adult supervision.
Children whose parents reported having neglected them in the previous year were 56-percent more likely to be obese than children who were not neglected. However, corporal punishment and psychological aggression weren't tied to obesity risk, the researchers found.
While children may experience physical or psychological punishment as a consequence of their actions, Whitaker noted, neglect may be particularly stressful because it's not predictable.
"Unlike other kinds of maltreatment, the child may not be seeing it as a response to their misbehaviour," he said. "This may be the one thing that distinguishes it from the other types of treatment."
The study wasn't designed to look at the mechanism by which neglect might lead to obesity, but the researcher notes that it's possible that children - like adults - may overeat because they feel lonely or isolated. The "huge level of distress" children feel when they are neglected might even affect their activity levels, he added.