• Posted March 27, 2025

Obesity More Likely Among Kids Of Obese Moms, Smokers

A mom’s health and lifestyle choices can affect her kids’ risk of obesity as adults, a new study says.

Specifically, a child is 3 to 4 times more likely to become an obese adult if their mom was obese, researchers reported March 26 in PLOS One.

A mom’s smoking also increased their kid’s risk of adult obesity by 60% to 80%, results show.

“In particular, we note that the effect of maternal influences persists through to age 42 and that strikingly, those predictors were just as powerful (and prevalent) in the era before the current obesity pandemic began,” concluded the research team led by Glenna Nightingale, a research fellow with the University of Edinburgh in the U.K.

In effect, factors beyond a person’s control can influence whether they become overweight or obese as adults, researchers said.

For the new study, researchers analyzed data on nearly 11,500 children who participated in an ongoing British study of kids born on a single week in March 1958 across England, Scotland and Wales.

The team observed health trends among these children out to age 42, and compared their health to aspects of their parents’ life that might influence their risk for obesity.

Results showed that if a mom was obese or if she smoked, her child was more likely to be obese in adulthood.

“The persistent importance of maternal factors well into their children’s adult life illustrates the ‘long reach’ of intergenerational influences,” researchers wrote. “The effect of mother’s BMI, for example, is the largest.”

Because of how long the study has been going, researchers noted that these factors were just as powerful prior to the rise of obesity rates in the U.K.

More research is needed to figure out the early-life factors that influence obesity, and thus could be used to target prevention programs in children and adults, researchers said.

More information

The Cleveland Clinic has more on childhood obesity.

SOURCE: PLOS One, March 26, 2025