March 11, 2026
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One tool to reduce childhood obesity rates: help parents better manage their stress, a new study finds.
Parenting has become so stressful that two years ago the U.S. surgeon general issued an advisory that it had become a public health issue.
"Something has to change," Dr. Vivek Murthy, who finished his term in 2025, wrote about how parents now have to navigate managing social media and a youth mental health crisis, among other new stressors.
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Murthy cited a 2023 study by the American Psychological Association that found 48% of parents said their stress was "completely overwhelming" most days, compared to 26% of people without children. Parental stress was not only affecting the mental health and well-being of adults, but also that of children, Murthy said.
Murthy's words reverberate in a new study published in the journal Pediatrics that focuses on how parental stress impacts obesity rates in their children.
In the United States, approximately 1 in 5 children have obesity, defined as having a body mass index above the 95th percentile for age and sex. That translates to nearly 15 million youth ages 2 to 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Previous research has shown parents who are under stress may turn to fast food and make other decisions that affect their children's eating habits. The new study looks at the issue from another angle, showing that reducing parental stress has positive implications for reducing obesity in their children.
"We already knew that stress can be a big contributor in the development of childhood obesity," said Yale psychologist Rajita Sinha, who led the study. "The surprise was that when parents handled stress better, their parenting improved, and their young child's obesity risk went down."
Along with helping children develop healthy eating and exercise habits, Sinha called the new research the "third leg of the stool" in combating childhood obesity.
To examine how reducing parental stress might help reduce childhood obesity, the Yale researchers conducted a 12-week trial with 114 parents – diverse ethnically and socioeconomically – with children ages 2 to 5 who were obese. One group of parents was given training in mindfulness and behavior self-regulation, in addition to counseling about nutrition and exercise. The other group only received nutrition and exercise counseling.
The researchers measured parental stress and their children's weight during the study, following up three months later to record the children's weight again. The researchers also tracked what they termed "positive parenting behaviors," such as listening, patience and warmth.
Parents who received the mindfulness training exhibited reduced stress and more positive parenting behaviors. Their children ate a healthier diets and had not gained significant weight at the three-month mark. Parents in the control group did not experience reduced stress or show positive changes in parenting behaviors, and their children had "significant" weight gain.
"The combination of mindfulness with behavioral self-regulation to manage stress, integrated with healthy nutrition and physical activity, seemed to protect the young children from some of the negative effects of stress on weight gain," Sinha said.
