Mother Blame, Fat Shame, and Moral Panic: “Obesity” and Child Welfare

This article seeks to examine the scholarly journal articles and print media that describe the intersections of child protection and pediatric “obesity,” arguing that presentations of these cases and related interventions rest at the nexus of dominant discourses of child-centered parenting and fears of the “obesity epidemic.” The messaging in both scholarly literature and news media on this topic echoes taken-for-granted truths about fatness and parenting and applies them to the contentious terrain of child welfare. In so doing, this literature reifies myths of both poor parenting and bodily failures and inscribes these failures on the bodies of the children described therein.