Asia-Pacific News

May 22, 2009, 3:52 GMT

Survey: Spoiled Hong Kong infants rely on doctors, spoon-feeding

Hong Kong - The attentions of preening parents and maids might be hindering the development of pampered infants in wealthy Hong Kong, doctors warned Friday. Nearly eight out of 10 babies from 9 to 12 months are reliant on spoon-feeding by parents or maids at a time when they should be starting to feed themselves, a survey found. And almost nine out of 10 infants surveyed had been taken to the doctor in the past six months with an average visit count of 3.47 times. One infant was taken 20 times in six months. The survey of more than 1,100 families in the city of 7 million by Hong Kong Chinese University confirmed suspicions that babies are being mollycoddled, researchers concluded. Paediatric specialists who supervised the survey warned that Hong Kong children might 'lag behind' in development if parents and maids were overprotective. Hong Kong has one of the lowest birth rates in the world with the average woman giving birth to less than one child, giving the city a large proportion of one-child families. Unlike neighbouring China, it has no one-child policy, but couples often opt to have only one child because of the high cost of child-raising in the densely populated high-rise city.

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