The good, the bad, and the blameless in parenting: a thematic analysis of discussions of childhood obesity on an internet forum

BACKGROUND: Childhood obesity is affecting an increasing percentage of families globally. For families, obesity is often a tense issue, not least because of the negative stigma and cultural perceptions associated with it. Discussions around childhood obesity do not take place only at home or in healthcare, but increasingly on social media, such as Internet discussion forums. Our aim was to analyse how childhood obesity is discussed on a Finnish online discussion forum by parents of children with obesity and other commenters. METHOD: We gathered and analysed 16 discussion threads on childhood obesity taken from a Finnish Internet discussion forum, vauva.fi, between 2015 and 2021 (a total of 331 posts). For the analysis, we chose threads where the parents of a child with obesity took part. The parents’ and other commenters’ discussions were analysed and interpreted with inductive thematic analysis. RESULTS: In the online discussions, childhood obesity was discussed mostly in the context of parenting, parental responsibility and lifestyle choices within the family. We identified three themes that were used to define parenting. In the theme of proving good parenting, parents and commenters listed healthy elements in their family’s lifestyle to show their responsibility and parenting skills. In the theme of blaming bad parents, other commenters pointed out mistakes in the parents’ behaviour or offered them advice. Moreover, many acknowledged that some factors causing childhood obesity were outside the parents’ influence, forming the theme of lifting the blame from parents. In addition, many parents brought up that they were genuinely ignorant of the reasons for their child’s overweight. CONCLUSIONS: These results are in line with previous studies suggesting that in Western cultures obesity – including childhood obesity – is typically seen as the individual’s fault and is associated with negative stigma. Consequently, counselling parents in healthcare should be expanded from supporting a healthy lifestyle to strengthening parents’ identity as being good enough parents who are already making many health enhancing efforts. Situating the family in a wider context of the obesogenic environment could ease the parents’ feelings that they have failed at parenting. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-023-15314-6.