Research reportParent feeding restriction and child weight. The mediating role of child disinhibited eating and the moderating role of the parenting context
Section snippets
Eating behaviour
Research suggests that emotional and external food cues may operate together to trigger overeating (e.g., van Strien, Schippers, & Cox, 1995), a concept often referred to as disinhibited overeating. The psychosomatic and externality theories of obesity link overeating in response to negative emotions (emotional overeating) and food cues in the external environment (external eating) to children's increased energy intake and weight gain over time (e.g., Kaplan and Kaplan, 1957, Rodin and
Parenting behaviours and styles related to children's eating and weight
One aim of this study was to examine how parenting behaviours and parenting dimensions are associated with children's eating and weight. We focused on the parent feeding behaviour of restriction and parenting dimensions specific to the context of parent interactions with children in the eating/feeding domain (parenting dimensions). First, parent feeding behaviours have been shown to influence children's eating and parent restriction often is the strongest correlate of children's disinhibited
Participants
Participants were 247 caregivers (94% female) and their children aged 4–8 years (M = 5.74 years, SD = 0.89; 48% female). Children were attending preschool or grades 1 or 2 in two primary schools in Australia. Parents who participated had primary responsibility for the planning and preparation of family meals. Overall, 49% of parents returned questionnaires. Thirteen participants were excluded from data analyses due to excessive missing data. In addition, four parents completed a questionnaire for
Descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations
Table 1 summarizes means, standard deviations, and zero-order correlations between measurement variables. As expected, child BMI was significantly positively associated with disinhibited eating, r = .30, p < .01. Hence, children with a higher BMI had parents who reported that their children showed more disinhibited eating. With regards to intercorrelations between measures of parenting, the parenting dimensions of coercion, chaos, supportiveness and structure were significantly intercorrelated, in
Discussion
The findings of this study identify some aspects of parenting associated with children's eating and weight. Although the results of the study are correlational and do not provide evidence that parents play a socialising role in young children's disinhibited eating and BMI, they contribute to the evidence that some of the association of parenting with children's BMI may be mediated by children's disinhibited eating behaviour, and some parenting behaviours may have a differential association with
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