Fatness and obesity among the parents of lean probands

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Abstract
As shown in 1368 proband‐parent pairings involving lean probands and their parents, the fathers and mothers of lean probands tend to be of reduced fatness level themselves (–0.25 Z scores for the sum of two skinfolds) and infrequently obese (10.2% of cases as compared with 16% expectancy). However, these descriptive values are curvilinearily related to the age of the proband, maximizing when the proband is an adolescent. For adolescents, fathers and mothers of lean probands average 0.36 Z scores below the total sample and are least often obese (<8%). It may be concluded that adolescents comprise the prototypical sample for family‐line studies of fatness and leanness, either because “familial” obesity is best expressed in this age group or because parent‐child resemblances in fatness level are a temporal function of the living‐together (or cohabitational) effect.

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