Elsevier

Appetite

Volume 47, Issue 2, September 2006, Pages 212-219
Appetite

Research report
Maternal and paternal controlling feeding practices with male and female children

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2006.04.002Get rights and content

Abstract

This study aimed to compare maternal and paternal feeding practices with male and female children and examine the influence of the gender of both the parent and child on the relationship between parental unhealthy eating attitudes and controlling feeding practices. One hundred and eighty-eight participants (94 co-habiting mother–father dyads, mean age 36.4 years, SD=4.9), who were the parents of 46 male and 48 female children (mean age 37.7 months, SD=12.7) completed measures of unhealthy eating attitudes and feeding practices. Mothers and fathers differed significantly in their reports of unhealthy eating attitudes but not in their restrictive or pressurising feeding practices. Mothers reported greater perceived feeding responsibility and greater monitoring of their children's food intake than fathers. Bulimia scores were correlated with controlling feeding practices in mothers of girls but not boys. Fathers’ body dissatisfaction was correlated with monitoring of sons’ but not daughters’ food intake. These findings suggest that parental extrapolation of weight concerns may be more likely to occur within mother–daughter and father–son relationships.

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.

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