关键词: 儿童, 身高, 父母身高中值, 矮身材, 高身材

Abstract: Objective To analyze the effect of parental height on the height of children under 7 years old, in order to provide evidence for individual growth evaluation. Methods A total of 161 297 children with completed parental height information, who were from The National Survey on Physical Growth and Development of Children Under 7 Years in The Nine Cities in 2015, were analyzed.The Z-scores of children's height, father's height, mother's height, and mid-parental height were calculated.The Spearman method was used to analyze the correlation between children's height and father's height, mother's height and mid-parental height.All the children were divided into 6 groups according to their mid-parental height and their differences of children's height in each group were compared. Results 1) Children's height was positively correlated with father's height, mother's height and mid-parental height(r=0.13—0.42, P<0.05), and the correlation coefficient with mid-parental height was the highest.2) According to their mid-parental height, the children were divided into six groups:short stature, slightly short stature, low-medium stature, upper-medium stature, slightly tall stature and tall stature.The average height of children in each group increased sequentially from parental short stature to parental tall stature.The children's height in the parental short stature group was 1.9—14.7 cm lower than that in the parental tall stature group, and the differences increased with age.3) The third percentile (P₃) of children's height in the parental slightly short stature group was 0.6—4.8 cm lower than that the P₃ of Chinese children's height standards, while the P₃ of children's height in the parental slight tall stature group was 0.6—4.7 cm higher than that of the height standards.4) The average differences between the children's height Z score and the mid-parental height Z score in the parental short stature, parental slightly short stature, parental low-medium stature, parental upper-medium stature, parental slightly tall stature and parental tall stature group were 1.27±0.99, 0.61±0.92, 0.18±0.89,-0.19±0.90,-0.61±0.93, and-1.17±0.92, respectively. Conclusions The height of children under 7 years old is positively correlated with their parental height.The height of children with parental short stature is lower than that of children with parental tall stature, and the children's height are higher than the genetic height of the family among the children with parental short stature, which suggested that the influence of parental height should not be ignored when evaluating and explaining the height of individual children.

Key words: children, height, mid-parental height, short stature, tall stature