How parents shape children’s ‘health lifestyles’ varies across social class

A recent sociological study explored how children’s health habits are shaped by their families and communities and how those habits are connected to social class. Researchers said policies seeking to change health behaviors that fail to account for these influences may not be successful.

The article, “Children’s Health Lifestyles and the Perpetuation of Inequalites,” published in the March issue of Journal of Health and Social Behavior, examined middle and upper-middle-class families with young children in two cities in the western U.S.

Using interviews, focus groups, and observing families at home, authors Stefanie Mollborn (Stockholm University and University of Colorado-Boulder), Jennifer A. Pace (U.S. Census Bureau), and Bethany Rigles (Good Nutrition Ideas) looked at how parents think about health and how they try to guide their children’s daily routines.

The researchers found that parents try to create a “health lifestyle” for their kids, believing it will help them succeed later in life. These lifestyles include not just healthy behaviors like exercise and diet, but also reflect parents’ values, identities, and what’s considered “healthy” in their communities.

There were some key differences in how health lifestyles looked between the two social classes examined. For example, in upper-middle-class families, there was a strong focus on structure and achievement, limiting screen time, emphasizing fitness, and watching children’s weight.

These choices often reflected the parents’ own identity and desire for their children to achieve future success. Middle-class families focused more on the child’s current well-being or allowed more space for the child’s own identity to shape health habits.

The researchers noted that efforts to change a child’s health behavior through school or community health programs may be less effective without an understanding of and appreciation for how families view health and success, the meanings parents attach to their parenting choices, and the ways children express their own identities through health behaviors.

“Understanding health lifestyles in this way could spur more effective and appropriate policy efforts,” the researchers wrote. “Changing people’s health behaviors is notoriously difficult—in part because a target behavior likely combines with other behaviors within a health lifestyle that is also comprised of identities, narratives, norms, and understandings of health.”