Infants Cared for in Another Home Become Heavier Toddlers
THURSDAY, July 30 (HealthDay News) -- When infants attend day care in someone else's home, they're more likely to be heavier than average by the time they're toddlers, new research suggests.
Harvard researchers report in the August issue of Pediatrics that babies aged 6 months and younger who were cared for in someone else's home, rather than in their own home or at a day-care center, were more likely to weigh more in relation to their height at the ages of 1 and 3.
"An infant who was in child care in someone else's home in the first six months of life was 5 or so percentage points higher [on growth charts] at 1 or 3 years old than an infant who started at the same point but was cared for at home by another provider or at a center," said study author Sara Benjamin, a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of population medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Benjamin said it's not clear why this type of care may lead to heavier children. She said it could be a characteristic of the families that choose this type of care, or it could have something to do with this less formal day-care setting.
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