The Effects of Parental Education in the Health and Nutrition of African American Children - Essay Sample

There is a lot of evidence that exists between the health of African American children and parental education. The mechanism that relates to parental education to the nutritional health of children is not very clear. Still, research has proven that children with educated parents have better nutrition than those of non-educated parents. Both external and internal legitimacy concerns inundate the effects of parental education on the nutrition of African American children. Researchers suggest that if the school curriculum continues to focus more on nutritional knowledge and improving the health of the future parents, then the nutritional status of the coming generation will be enhanced and will be of high value to the African American children. This paper is about the effects of parental education on the health and nutrition of African and American children.

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It is very hard for children to maintain healthy body weight with no health complications, and it is the responsibility of the parents to make sure that their children achieve those factors. If the parents are not fully educated, it will be hard for them to provide their children with the right diets to maintain their nutritional health. Also, the parent needs to know the correct diet they are giving to children, because wrong diets may cause obesity and the children to grow overweight (Günes, 2015). The health hazards that are related to obesity and overweight are common among African American children, and this makes them have augmented premature mortality and morbidity when they become adults.

Research has proven that parents play a significant role in maintaining the health behaviors of their children, and weight status and parental education have been linked with these results in children. In the United States, evidence has shown that if African American Children are more educated and have a higher education level, then their children are more likely to become overweight because of the positive association between the child and the parents (Sherman & Smith, 2019). This positive association means that parents are educated and provide their children with every kind of food, but they do not observe the nutritional effects of those diets; hence more intake leads to overweight children.

Also, due to social norms, some African American parents believe that an overweight child is seen as a healthy child because they have enough food, and they do not have food insecurities because they are educated and hence earn more money. Also, the African American children from more wealthy parents rarely do simple physical activities such as jogging or walking because mostly they travel by use of cars and stay in the house all day long because they are provided with everything (Sherman & Smith, 2019). This shows that a parent might be educated, but African American children will continue to grow overweight and suffer from obesity without focusing on nutritional health education.

Also, higher levels of education are associated with better jobs; hence parents who are not educated have low income, and this means providing for their children will be more difficult. For example, if those parents have many children than they can raise, they are more likely to suffer from malnutrition because there will be no enough food to feed them. Since the parents are also uneducated, then they will not be provided with the right diets; hence, the nutritional health of those children will be very low. Researchers suggest that these results of obesity and overweight African American children may result from different social perceptions and norms that healthy children should be fat and thicker.

This is because there is a rise of more educated parents who prefer fast foods to balanced diets, and motorized transport to physical activities. After all, they have less knowledge about the significance of preserving a healthy body weight. Children's nutrition and health are highly associated (Chen & Li, 2019). Evidence shows that African American children who are malnourished are more likely to suffer from an illness that can cause long-lasting or permanent impacts throughout their lives.

Malnutrition is the lack of enough nutrients and calories in the body. If the case is extreme, then it might cause death. This case happens where parents are not educated about the importance of healthy body weight and inadequate money to feed their children. Health professionals use three anthropometric indicators to measure the nutritional status of children. These are; weight for age (underweight), height for age (stunting), and weight for height (wasting) (The Impact of Parental Education on Child Health and Cognitive Development in Ghana, 2018). A group of African American children from different backgrounds was gathered to be tested for nutritional status.

The results indicate that children whose parents were not educated were underweight, and some of them were suffering from malnutrition. Other children from wealthy backgrounds with educated parents showed that most of them were overweight due to eating fatty foods. Only 10% of the children in that group revealed a healthy body weight because their parents were educated (Kassouf & Senauer, 2015). They also knew the importance of maintaining healthy body weight and beneficial physical activities for their children.

With parental education and the importance of having a balanced diet, parents should know that right nitration is very important for the mental and physical growth of children during their first two years after birth. Studies have shown young children with poor nutrition likely have poor educational results, and this affects their productivity during the adult years (medrano et al., 2018). Both malnutrition and overweight have other costs, such as physical suffering, because parents have to use the money to treat their sick children and waste time because they have to stay home and take care of their sick children.

Hence, parental education, combined with nutrition health programs, is very important for the growth of African American children and their nutrition. Parents, mostly mothers, are being advised to enroll in nutritional education programs so that they can be able to offer proper nutrition for their children (SHARIFF & AHN, 2018). This will improve nutritional results for their children and reduce other health risks that come with being overweight and underweight.

Comparing children raised by paternal educated to maternal educated parents, studies reveal children whose fathers had a higher level of education were less likely to experience adverse nutritional outcomes such as obesity. This is because most fathers who are educated do not cook for their children; hence they hire maids who will assist them in raising the children (Muthuri et al., 2016). This means that some evidence has been provided to show that the education of a father decreases the likelihood of child stunting. Mother’s education is a robust conjecturer of child stunting with less attenuation of relation by other aspects such as community and household level.

Although the children of educated parents also experience some adverse nutritional outcomes, theirs is not as serious of children of non-educated parents. This is because they try to feed their children as much as possible, but they do not observe the balanced diets; hence, school curricular is advised to introduce nutritional programs to educate people about the importance of preserving a healthy body (Du et al., 2016). The impact of a mother's education on a child's nutritional status for malnutrition is positive, and this means a mother's level of education affects the children indirectly.

This is because children with educated mothers are more likely to become overweight and not suffer from malnutrition. After all, they are raised with fatty foods. As parents with higher education levels have better-paying jobs, they are advised to observe healthy body guidelines for their children to reduce the long-term effects of obesity, such as diabetes, when children grow up (Alderman and Headey, 2017). Looking at the children who are raised in slums, human capital and stunting are highly associated.

Girls are emphasized to take part in education more and also enroll nutritional educational programs to break poverty in their lives and also they can have knowledge on how to raise healthy children during their motherhood stage. Health and nutrition of children have said to be independent, but they are highly linked with stunting. Mostly, the African-American children raised in the low socio-economic environment have big differences due to their nutritional status and the effect of their parental education and the understanding of having a healthy and balanced diet.

In conclusion, parental education has proved to play a huge role in the health and nutritional status of African-American children, and parents should be educated more about the importance of maintaining a healthy body, and also should enroll in health programs to gain knowledge on how to raise their children in a healthy way.

References

Alderman, H., & Headey, D. D. (2017). How Important is Parental Education for Child Nutrition? World Development, 94, 448–464. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.02.007

Muthuri, S. K., Onywera, V. O., Tremblay, M. S., Broyles, S. T., Chaput, J.-P., Fogelholm, M., Hu, G., Kuriyan, R., Kurpad, A., Lambert, E. V., Maher, C., Maia, J., Matsudo, V., Olds, T., Sarmiento, O. L., Standage, M., Tudor-Locke, C., Zhao, P., Church, T. S., & Katzmarzyk, P. T. (2016). Relationships between Parental Education and Overweight with Childhood Overweight and Physical Activity in 9–11 Year Old Children: Results from a 12-Country Study. PLOS ONE, 11(8), e0147746. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147746

Kassouf, A. L., & Senauer, B. (2015). Direct and Indirect Effects of Parental Education on Malnutrition among Children in Brazil: A Full Income Approach. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 44(4), 817–838. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1154353

The Impact of Parental Education on Child Health and Cognitive Development in Ghana. (2018, July 31). Innovations for Poverty Action. https://www.poverty-action.org/study/impact-parental-education-child-health-and-cognitive-development-ghana

Sherman, L. D., & Smith, M. L. (2019). African American Fathers’ Perceived Role for the Dietary Behaviors of Their Children: A Qualitative Study. American Journal of Men’s Health, 13(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/1557988319840851

Du, Z., Wen, X., & Zhao, G. (2016). The Effects of Maternal Education on Children Health: Evidence from the adoption of Compulsory Schooling Law in China. https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=HD2017&paper_id=5#:~:text=The%20results%20show%20that%20children

SHARIFF, A., & AHN, N. (2018). Mother’s Education Effect on Child Health: An Econometric Analysis of Child Anthropometry in Uganda. Indian Economic Review, 30(2), 203–222. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29793719

Chen, Y., & Li, H. (2019). Mother’s education and child health: Is there a nurturing effect? Journal of Health Economics, 28(2), 413–426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2008.10.005

Medrano, patricia, rodríguez, catherine, & villa, edgar. (2018). DOES MOTHER’S EDUCATION MATTER IN CHILD’S HEALTH? EVIDENCE FROM SOUTH AFRICA1. South African Journal of Economics, 76(4), 612–627. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1813-6982.2008.00210.x