Parents’ Perceptions of the Challenges to Helping Their Children Maintain or Achieve a Healthy Weight

Table 2

Differences in the probability of reported overall daily challenges in helping their children eat to maintain or achieve a healthy weight, by parent race/ethnicity ().

		Parent race/ethnicity
	Total	White (non-Hispanic)	Black (non-Hispanic)	Hispanic
	Predicted probability (95% CI)	Predicted probability (95% CI)	Predicted probability (95% CI)	Predicted probability (95% CI)
Daily challenges to help the child achieve a healthy weight
Difficulty^1 in making sure the child eats for a healthy weight	44.7% (40.4, 48.9)	48.2% (42.5, 53.9)	36.5% (24.4, 48.7)	39.5% (29.6, 49.4)
Problems^2with helping the child maintain or achieve a healthy weight^3
Lots of advertising for unhealthy foods	44.2% (35.3, 49.1)	45.1% (36.4, 53.8)	26.0% (4.9, 47.0)	44.5% (27.6, 61.4)
School lunch/vending is unhealthy	31.6% (26.7, 36.6)	28.9%^c (23.1, 34.8)	23.5%^c (8.0, 38.9)	50.1%^ab (37.3, 62.8)
Nearby stores do not sell reasonably priced fruits and vegetables	26.6% (20.4, 32.8)	28.3% (20.2, 36.4)	27.2% (6.1, 48.3)	22.1% (9.2, 35.1)
Few social venues (restaurants or malls) serving healthy food	29.7% (24.0, 35.4)	27.1% (20.3, 33.9)	41.8% (22.1, 61.4)	28.2% (12.9, 43.4)
Healthy school food is expensive	26.2% (19.9, 32.6)	26.8% (17.9, 35.7)	16.6%^c (2.9, 30.4)	38.5%^b (22.1, 54.8)
Unhealthy food very close to school	25.4% (19.4, 31.5)	17.4%^bc (11.3, 23.5)	40.6%^a (20.4, 60.7)	37.5%^a (20.6, 54.4)

Note. All Table 2 estimates adjust for parent gender, child gender, parent age, child age, parent education, household composition (1- or 2-parent), household income, parent perception of child’s weight, number of children in household, and whether parents or siblings are overweight. ^aSignificantly different from non-Hispanic Whites at ; ^bsignificantly different from non-Hispanic Blacks at ; ^csignificantly different from Hispanics at . ¹Difficult = very/somewhat; ²problems = major or minor; ³individual questions only asked among a randomized subsample of parents. Data are based on a poll was fielded from October 11 to November 21, 2012, using a nationally representative, randomized telephone sample (including both landline and cellular phones) of households with children aged 2–17 years.