I’d give it as a case by case basis. Clearly someone who intentionally fattens her kid up is different than someone who allows her kid to become obese. There are a number of core reasons by kids become obese, some of it is genetic (and we don’t necessarily understand the “fat” gene yet, so it’s kind of hard to say definitively), but a lot of it is the American diet and our food culture. Unfortunately, most people aren’t well equipped to sort through all the various things that are put in our so-called food supply these days. Most of our foods are laden with hydrogenated oils, high fructose sweeteners, or a lethal combination of fat, salt and sugar which is as addictive as heroin. Furthermore, many of the healthy/natural foods, even if one does educate himself/herself as to what they are, and how to prepare them (it no longer comes naturally now that we are no longer an agriculture based society), are way too expensive for the average Joe. In fact, the cheapest way to eat these days is by going to fast food places….get a happy meal with a burger, fries and a soda for your kid and it includes a toy for under 3 bucks? How you gonna feed junior for less than that?
And I guarantee you, even if you were sensible about 2 meals a day and did one bad thing per day in terms of something like a happy meal or some similar fast food, you’d get pretty damn close to 3k calories a day even for a kid. Our culture is fucked up, we can’t start prosecuting every parent of a fat kid…over ⅔ of kids these days are fat, it’s not as if people just forgot how to parent, it’s that our food supply has been poorly regulated and the goal has been to maximize profits by any means necessary, even if it means we’re all poisoning ourselves every time we eat. Consider too that what we think we know, historically speaking about nutrition will probably be turned on its head in 10 years time. Remember when margarine was a heart healthy alternative to butter? So we put hydrogenated fats in all our foods, and people got FATTER. Sugar has never been all that expense, but high fructose corn syrup is way cheaper for the same amount of sweetness….we put that in all our foods and guess what…people got FATTER. We found out Sweet and Low gives you cancer…..we answered that with Equal which gives you brain tumors. The problem is, we don’t eat fucking food anymore, we eat processed crap because it’s all we can afford, it’s all we know, it’s all we understand and its how we’ve been conditioned. As a fat person, yes my mom gave me food issues, but I don’t want her to go to jail for it, she did her best. I try to keep my kid thin, but he may get fat, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to jail because he has fat parents and wasn’t able to overcome the things I couldn’t overcome myself.