Very thought-provoking article. Poverty is only part of it. Lower SE households have more stress, the parents are more often depressed and have understandable rage at working so many hours and not having money after expenses. Most parents who are poor do as much as they can to provide for their children first and show love and support to them, but I think it is harder and truly heroic if they can pull it off without the kids feeling their stress. There are fat kids from wealthy families and I wonder if they suffer the same feelings of isolation with poor parenting despite having a full refrigerator. I grew up in a family of 6 kids, with only one parent working, and more money went to alcohol than food. My mother added rice to milk to lower the cost and she told me as an adult she did it so we would be quiet. They were both children of abusive parents and continued the family tradition with us. We were teased about our hand-me-downs at school and embarrassed to have other kids come to our house. Food can be a replacement for the satisfaction a child might get from self esteem and spending some time one-on-one with an adult who loves you and knows how to show it. Being lonely, ignored, and abused leaves a huge hole and food might be the only pleasure available. I agree that not having enough food makes you more likely to eat when it is available and ignore stop-eating cues and that more poor kids have poor-protein, poor-nutrition diets. But I think it is more complicated that just lack of money. Even this study showed that high SE kids exhibited some of the same behavior as low SE kids, jut in different proportions, and that some lower SE kids did as well as higher SE kids. Poor parenting crosses all SE boundaries (as obesity does) but combining poor parenting and abuse with food shortages truly never leaves you, even after a successful DS.
