Research reportMaternal and paternal controlling feeding practices with male and female children
Introduction
Parental use of pressuring feeding practices with their children have been associated with children's lack of self-regulation of food intake and failure to respond to internal signals of hunger and satiety (e.g. Johnson & Birch, 1994), refusal of foods in adulthood that were linked with pressurising feeding practices in childhood (Batsell, Brown, Ansfield, & Paschall, 2002), and inhibition of healthy weight trajectories in infancy (Farrow & Blissett, in press). Furthermore, restrictive feeding practices have been associated with preference for foods that are restricted (Fisher & Birch, 1999), eating in the absence of hunger (Birch, Fisher, & Davison, 2003) and a more negative self-evaluation of eating (Fisher & Birch, 2000).
It is undisputed that mothers tend to be the primary caregivers, and as such tend to be the ones predominantly responsible for feeding their children; for example, in recent studies which have invited parents to provide information regarding their children's eating, between 2% and 8% of respondents were fathers (Patrick, Nicklas, Hughes, & Morales, 2005; Wardle, Carnell, & Cooke, 2005). Indeed, the majority of research in this area has focussed on maternal feeding practices, despite the fact that paternal factors have been demonstrated to be important determinants of decisions to breastfeed, child body satisfaction, child's engagement in food restricting activities and maternal social support within the feeding interaction (Davison & Birch, 2001; Field et al., 2001; Olrick, Pianta, & Marvin, 2002; Saarilehto, Keskinen, Lapinleimu, Helenius, & Simell, 2001; Scott, Landers, Hughes, & Binns, 2001; Smolak, Levine, & Schermer, 1999). For example, Smolak, Levine, and Schermer (1999) demonstrated that girls’ body esteem was related to their fathers’ complaints about his weight, and his dieting behaviours were related to his daughter's dieting concerns and behaviours. Furthermore, Olrick et al. (2002) demonstrated that maternal marital satisfaction was significantly related to the father's involvement with and responsiveness to his child's mealtime signals.
Whilst maternal factors have generally been found to be more important than paternal factors in the prediction of child eating disturbance (Davison & Birch, 2001; Wertheim, Mee, & Paxton, 1999), the majority of studies that have included paternal factors in their investigation have found some relationship between paternal attitudes such as body dissatisfaction, paternal behaviours such as dieting, and their child's disturbed eating attitudes and behaviours (Davison & Birch, 2001; Field et al., 2001; Smolak et al., 1998). Furthermore, in some studies, paternal factors have been shown to add significantly to the impact of maternal factors in the explanation of phenomena such as initiation of dieting (e.g. Huon & Walton, 2000), body esteem in 5-year old girls (Davison & Birch, 2001) and weight concerns and dieting behaviours (Field et al., 2001). Furthermore, it appears that the link between paternal and child attitudes and behaviour may be more specific to the father–daughter relationship than to the father–son relationship (Thelen & Cormier, 1995), although some studies have found links between father and son's eating attitudes and behaviours (e.g. Field et al., 2001). These studies together emphasise the importance of continued assessment of the role of the father in feeding and eating interactions. However, to date, no research has explicitly compared maternal and paternal control of feeding in non-clinical, pre-school boys and girls.
Furthermore, no research to date has examined the relationships between parental unhealthy eating attitudes and the use of controlling feeding practices in both mothers and fathers with their daughters and sons. Maternal eating psychopathology has been consistently related to feeding disturbance in children (e.g. Coulthard, Blissett, & Harris, 2004), and it has been suggested that there may be different motivations for maternal use of controlling feeding practices with male and female children, which may be linked to maternal eating psychopathology (Blissett, Meyer, Farrow, Bryant-Waugh, & Nicholls, 2005). It has been suggested that the links between parental eating concerns and child feeding are more likely to be transmitted from mother to daughter, than through fathers, or to sons (Fisher & Birch, 1999; Smolak et al., 1999; Wertheim et al., 1999). These differential relationships may depend in part on different social pressures on children to conform to gender stereotypes and on mothers to feed their child in a way which facilitates the achievement of these stereotyped ideals. For example, Birch and Fisher (1995) hypothesised that the higher amount of control placed upon girls’ food intake reflects sex differences in ideal body size and attractiveness, and that it is more acceptable to be a heavy boy than a heavy girl. Furthermore, Ricciardelli and McCabe (2001) suggested that parents are less likely to encourage boys to lose weight as a result of the differences in societal ideals for weights of boys and girls, and that parents of boys may be more likely to encourage them to gain weight. However, such differences in feeding strategies dependent on child gender remain to be adequately investigated.
Birch and Davison (2001) describe a model of family environmental influence where child feeding practices of food restriction and pressure to eat are predicted by parent's own eating behaviours, children's current weight status, and parental concern about their child's future risk of overweight. These controlling parental practices are carried out in an attempt to prevent the development of overweight, but conversely reduce the child's opportunity for the development of self-regulatory behaviour, thus ultimately inhibiting self-regulation of energy intake in the presence of palatable foods. Such a model highlights that parent and child BMI should be taken into account in the assessment of the relationship between parental eating and feeding practices. However, whilst some work has suggested that the relationships between parental eating psychopathology and controlling feeding practices are independent of child actual or perceived weight (Tiggemann & Lowes, 2002), and that maternal and child BMI are unrelated to maternal-child feeding patterns (Faith et al., 2003), others suggest that aspects of controlling feeding practices can explain significant amounts of variance in children's adiposity (e.g. Spruijt-Metz, Lindquist, Birch, Fisher, & Goran, 2002). Therefore, the role of BMI in these relationships warrants further attention.
This study had two main aims. First, we aimed to assess whether mothers’ and fathers’ controlling feeding practices (pressure to eat, restriction, and monitoring) differed, and whether they varied according to the gender of their child. Second, we aimed to determine whether maternal and paternal unhealthy eating attitudes and BMI were related to controlling child feeding practices, and to examine variation in the patterns of relationships between attitudes and feeding practices dependent on the combination of the gender of parent and child within a dyad. It was hypothesised that unhealthy eating attitudes and perceived feeding responsibility would be greater for mothers than fathers. It was also hypothesised that there would be gender differences in the report of controlling feeding practices, with mothers reporting greater controlling feeding practices than fathers, and with mothers and fathers reporting greater restriction and monitoring of their daughters’ food intake, and reporting placing greater pressure to eat on their sons. It was also hypothesised that both unhealthy maternal and paternal eating attitudes would be related to more controlling feeding practices, and that these relationships would be particularly evident in mother–daughter dyads. We also examined the role of child and parent BMI in these relationships, given their established link with controlling feeding practices.
Section snippets
Participants
One hundred and eighty-eight co-habiting parents of 94 children (aged 12–62 months, mean age 37.7 months, SD=12.7, 46 male children, 48 female children) were recruited through private pre-school nurseries within the cities of Birmingham, Coventry and Cambridge, in the UK. Data on SES was not collected but the nurseries catered for primarily professional, well-educated parents in affluent areas (previous studies have not found an effect of SES on feeding practice, e.g. Faith et al., 2003;
Results
The mean EDI scores for females are consistent with those for non-clinical females reported by Berman et al.(1993), and although non-clinical comparison data regarding fathers is limited, the mean EDI scores for non-clinical males in this sample are comparable to those of Meyer and Waller (1998), in their student sample. The mean CFQ scores are broadly comparable to those reported for North American parents of young children (Birch et al., 2001) and slightly higher than those reported for a UK
Discussion
The study aimed to explore the differences between maternal and paternal eating-related attitudes and feeding practices, and to determine whether maternal and paternal unhealthy eating attitudes were related to controlling child feeding practices in a non-clinical group. Furthermore, the study aimed to examine variation in patterns of relationships between unhealthy eating attitudes and feeding practices dependent on the combination of the gender of parent and child within a dyad. The
Acknowledgement
Rosa Chillari and Wendy Pettitt for their help in data collection.
References (41)
- et al.
Eating attitudes in seasonal affective-disorder and bulimia-nervosa
Journal of Affective Disorders
(1993) - et al.
Family environmental factors influencing the developing behavioral controls of food intake and childhood overweight
Pediatric Clinics of North America
(2001) - et al.
Appetite and Eating Behavior in Children
Pediatric Clinics of North America
(1995) - et al.
Learning to overeat: Maternal use of restrictive feeding practices promotes girls’ eating in the absence of hunger
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
(2003) - et al.
Confirmatory factor analysis of the Child Feeding Questionnaire: A measure of parental attitudes, beliefs and practices about child feeding and obesity proneness
Appetite
(2001) - et al.
Young girls’ emerging dietary restraint and disinhibition are related to parental control in child feeding
Appetite
(2000) - et al.
The relationship between parental eating problems and children's feeding behavior: A selective review of the literature
Eating Behaviors
(2004) - et al.
Restricting access to foods and children's eating
Appetite
(1999) - et al.
Breast-feeding through the first year predicts maternal control in feeding and subsequent toddler energy intakes
Journal of the American Dietetic Association
(2000) - et al.
Predictors of maternal child-feeding style: Maternal and child characteristics
Appetite
(2001)
Predicting children's reported eating disturbances at 8 years of age
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
The benefits of authoritative feeding style: Caregiver feeding styles and children's food consumption patterns
Appetite
Children's body image concerns and eating disturbance: A review of the literature
Clinical Psychology Review
Relation between mothers’ child-feeding practices and children's adiposity
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Desire to be thinner and weight control among children and their parents
Behavior Therapy
Predictors of maternal control over children's eating behaviour
Appetite
Parental control over feeding and children's fruit and vegetable intake: How are they related?
Journal of the American Dietetic Association
“You Will Eat All of That!” A retrospective analysis of forced consumption episodes
Appetite
Maternal core beliefs and children's feeding problems
International Journal of Eating Disorders
Association between childhood feeding problems and maternal eating disorder: Role of the family environment
British Journal of Psychiatry
Cited by (179)
Reading, sharing, creating Pinterest recipes: Parental engagement and feeding behaviors
2023, AppetiteCitation Excerpt :Both mothers and fathers who use Pinterest were equally engaging in recipe/food preparation via the platform, even though the literature suggests parent gender differences in feeding practices. For example, that mothers tend to use monitoring more frequently than fathers (Blissett et al., 2006). This is informative as this suggests that Pinterest may be a venue to reach out to both parent genders to promote healthy feeding practices.
A cross-sectional study of father-daughter/son interactions from 1 Month to 3 years of age with the feeding and play scales: Exploring the psychometric properties
2022, AppetiteCitation Excerpt :Also, fathers tend to be less effective monitoring their child's food consumption when compared to mothers (Khandpur et al., 2014), and they may show less ability to recognize their child's distress signals (Cerniglia, Cimino, & Ballarotto, 2014; Lamb, 2010; Shoppe-Sullivan, Brown, Cannon, Mangelsdorf, & Sokolowski, 2008). Still, several other studies found no significant differences in the feeding parenting practices between mothers and fathers (Blissett et al., 2006; Powell, Frankel, Umemura, & Hazen, 2017). Overall, these findings demonstrate that fathers have a strong impact on their children's feeding behaviors.