Childhood obesity should be a factor in charging parents with neglect, a provocative new study by a team of British pediatric experts says.

“It is but a short step from seeing parents as agents of change to blaming them for their child’s obesity,” said Dr. Russell Viner in the current British Medical Journal.

“Childhood obesity can be seen as a failure to adequately care for your children.”

Viner, of the Institute of Child Health at University College London, and his colleagues raise the stakes in a contentious debate in several countries, including Canada, over why children are increasingly overweight or obese.

Childhood obesity has been cited in at least two divorce cases in recent years in Ontario.

In 2008, Dr. Glenn Berall, chief of pediatrics at North York General Hospital, urged family court to award custody of overweight children to the parent who showed a willingness to monitor their weight.

“My take on this is that obesity should be treated no differently than other cases where conditions can lead to limited fitness to parent,” Dr. Arya Sharma, chairman for obesity research and management at the University of Alberta and scientific director of the Canadian Obesity Network, was quoted as saying at the time.

A mother in South Carolina was charged with criminal neglect after her 14-year-old son reached 250 kilograms.

In the U.K., a 6-year-old boy was taken from his parents because of his obesity; another English family lost all eight of their children because of “obesity abuse” and neglect charges.

In Australia, as well, pediatricians have argued that childhood obesity could constitute parental neglect.

Obesity alone is not reason enough to have children’s aid authorities seize a child, Viner wrote.

He and his colleagues, however, do advocate a child-protection register to track parents who refuse to deal with their children’s weight problems or seek help.

“Parental failure to provide their children with adequate treatment for a chronic illness (asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, etc.) is a well accepted reason for a child protection registration for neglect,” they wrote.

Obesity can often be part of a pattern in a child’s life that could include poor school attendance, exposure to violence, poor hygiene or emotional and behavioural difficulties, the study pointed out.

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Taking a child away from his or her parents may not reverse obesity, Viner admitted. Part of the problem, he said, was the lack of data about obesity and children in government care.

“Guidelines for professionals are urgently needed.”