Should I Let My Child Take Ozempic?

A new generation of weight loss drugs has helped some people lose significant amounts of weight and improve their health. Does that mean we should let children take them, too?

I remember sitting on the slick, varnished floor of my middle school gymnasium, listening to the PE teacher address us on the first day of class. We were going to be weighed and measured — individually and privately — at the beginning and end of the school year, she explained. All of us would gain weight, the teacher told us confidently. We were growing children. That was our job.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only student who was feeling nervous about stepping on that scale. But what really makes the moment stand out in my mind is the way that teacher presented the prospect of gaining weight so matter-of-factly, without the judgment I was accustomed to hearing in adults’ voices every time they uttered those words.

According to those adults, losing weight, on the other hand, was to be celebrated as a joyous accomplishment. Think: Oprah Winfrey pulling a little red wagon of fat onto the stage to illustrate the 67 pounds she lost on a crash diet. (Winfrey has since apologized for her contribution to “diet culture.” She has also spoken about her own use of weight loss drugs, telling People magazine, “The fact that there’s a medically-approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift.”)

We tend to think of dramatic interventions like restrictive diets, intense exercise, weight loss drugs or surgery, as being the purview of adults, who, fairly or not, are considered culpable for their own weight gain. Children, on the other hand, are more likely to be presumed innocent. If we’re looking to assign blame for a child’s weight, we generally direct it at their parents.

But children are not immune from the discourse that surrounds them. Like my peers and I sitting on the floor of the gymnasium, kids understand from a very early age that there is a stigma associated with being fat, and that when grown-ups gain weight they talk about it with shame.