Situações familiares na obesidade exógena infantil do filho único

Abstract

Obesity has grown around the world, thus manifesting itself in all ages and socio-educational groups, which led the World Health Organization (WHO), to state that obesity is one of the most important public health problems. The effects caused by overweight in children in the twentieth century can cause a great impact on their self-esteem and also serious risks to their physical and mental health. This study aims to deepen the understanding of the family dynamics of obese only children in their childhood. By using a qualitative methodology, the sample for this study included eight families from two social-educational class groups: four children (two girls and two boys) represented both the high and low social-educational groups. Children whose age ranged from 7 to 10 years, with a nutritional evaluation for severe obesity: body mass index (BMI) > 97 percentile. To reach that, these instruments were used at their houses: a not fully structured interview with their parents; and with the whole family both the projective Scenotest and a nutritional evaluation were applied. The analysis was based on the psicoanalisis of link configurations (Berenstein and Puget). Its results pointed out to that family dynamics involving through contexts of society’s social, cultural and historical nature seem to favor both conditions: childhood obesity and only child. The contemporary family situation, with emphasis in individualism, influences in such a way that social elements become prevalent in family in intimate level. Therefore, the child can face, as soon as he is born, influencing conditions for the basic link with the mother figure making it not full. As a result, the lack of link drives the child’s satisfaction to food. Besides, the culture of consumption interferes with the way and kind of food offered, the ludic behavior, and the child’s social skills; furthermore, it interferes with the decrease of possibilities links: intrapersonal, interpersonal and transpersonal, in addition to the fact of not having siblings. From this perspective, this study showed that if not every only child is obese and if not every obese child is an only child, this latter condition can be a facilitator for the former one as the socio, cultural and historical conditions of the hypermodern consumption society seem to lead