title: Urban parents' perceptions of healthy infant growth.
abstract: To examine how urban parents' perceptions of healthy infant size and growth relate to objective weight-for-length percentiles of their children, parents of 222 (69% minority) 6- to 27-month-old infants were surveyed. In all, 41% of parents said growth charts had never been explained to them, and 31% were not confident they understood the meaning of chart percentiles. A total of 20% of parents preferred their child weigh ≥75th percentile, and these children had higher mean weight-for-length percentiles than their peers (P = .05). Similarly, 37% of parents agreed that "a chubby baby is a healthy baby," and these children had higher mean weight-for-length percentiles than others in the cohort ( P = .02). Additionally, 58% of parents ranked a growth curve with consistent growth at the 10th percentile as the "least healthy" of 6 infant growth curves. Growth charts are not consistently explained to or understood by urban parents, and many prefer early life growth patterns associated with later obesity.
authors.affiliation: Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Stephanie A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Sullivan
authors.forename: Kelly R
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Leite
authors.forename: Michele L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Shaffer
authors.forename: Leann L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Birch
authors.forename: Ian M
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Paul
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D001827:Body Height; D001835:Body Weight; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D014505:Urban Population; D055815:Young Adult