If you dont finish your vegetables: The effect of parents feeding styles on childrens food preferences
Jamie Greenstein and Bella(Mingbei) Tang
Department of Human Development and Family Studies, College of ACES, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
INTRODUCTION
Obesity has become a domestic and international trending
issue for young generations in recent years due to various
factors. Parenting style is one of the factors contributed to
the problem. Parenting style encompasses the values,
beliefs and practices of parents that are communicated to
the children (Kiefner-Burmeister et al. 2016). Parents
feeding styles come in four different forms as authoritarian,
authoritative, permissive, and indulgent parenting.
Although parenting style is not specific to the domain of
feeding, it relates to childrens eating and weight. Up to
now, only a few studies have examined how parents
feeding styles relates to the risk of childhood obesity. In
this study, researchers look specifically at the relationship
between parents feeding styles and childrens diet quality
at 12 months. Children at 12 months tend to have a
healthier diet pattern with an encouraging feeding style.
RESEARCH QUESTION
How does an authoritarian parents feeding style affect a
childs dietary preferences at 12 months of age?
Data Analysis
Child diet in the past 7 days was collected at 12 months
by parental report and converted into a continuous
variable of total feedings per week.
3 categories were created to analyze our data:
Unhealthy diet index: french fries, sweet foods
(candy, cookies, cake), sweet drinks (juice drinks,
soft drinks, soda, Kool-Aid) and 100% fruit or 100%
vegetable juice
Healthy diet index: fruits, vegetables, peanut butter,
nuts and soy foods
Dairy intake index: yogurt, cheese, ice cream, and
pudding
Feeding styles were also examined using these 4 key terms:
Warn (Authoritarian): Warn the child that you will take
a food away if the child doesnt eat (for example, If you
dont finish your vegetables, you wont get fruit) :How
often during the dinner meal do YOU
Positive (Authoritative): Say something positive about
the food the child is eating during dinner
Reward (Authoritative): Encourage the child to eat
something by using food as a reward (for example, If
you finish your vegetables, you will get some fruit)
Beg (Indulgent): Beg the child to eat dinner
Possible responses for the feeding styles items ranged
from 1 (never) to 5 (always). Responses of sometimes,
most of the time or always were grouped together and
classified as yes (coded as 1) while responses of
never or rarely were grouped and classified as no
(coded as 0).
.
METHOD
Self-reported surveys on parents feeding styles and
childrens diet quality from participating families
were collected and analyzed by researchers in the
study.
Differences in mean child diet by parental feeding styles at
12 months from Caregiving Feeding Style Questionnaire
(Hughes et al., 2005) were examined using the Wilcoxon
Two-Sample Test. P-values 0.05 were considered
significant.
Four hundred and three mothers were recruited by the
researchers of Strong Kids Project at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Among the participants,
93.5% of them received college education, and 6.5% of
them received high school or lower education. 70.7% of
the mothers were employed, and the rest of them were
unemployed or their employment status was unknown.
Majority of the children in the participated families were
well support and were not bothered by insecurity of food. :
Self-report surveys on parents feeding styles and
childrens diet quality from participating families were
collected and analyzed by researchers in the study. Parental
reports on child diet at 12 months were collected from the
parents who participated in the study. Codes for parents
feeding styles and childrens diet are created to analyze the
correlation between them.
RESULTS Graph
Hypothesis: 12 month old children tend to have a less
healthy diet pattern with an authoritarian parent feeding
style.
12 month old children tend to have a healthier diet
pattern with a positive parent feeding style. Examples of a
positive parent feeding style could be saying something
positive about the food the child is eating during meal or
encourage the child to eat more healthy food. It seems like
the result is supporting our hypothesis by supporting the
opposite viewpoint of our hypothesis. Authoritarian parent
feeding style is that parents are taking control of the food
the child must eat, and they make the child to eat what they
think are healthy foods. As you can see on the graph,
positive parent feeding style resulted in the highest mean
healthy foods intake. Out of the four parent feeding styles,
positive parent feeding style proved to be the most
effective parent feeding style that makes children eat more
healthy foods.
CONCLUSIONS
Parents feeding styles may relate to childrens diet
quality closer than previously examined. The
authoritarian feeding style has a more negative
impact on childrens diet habit. Future education
programs should emphasize more on reducing
authoritarian feeding styles and encouraging a more
responsive or authoritative style.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
References:
Lo, K., Cheung, C., Lee, A., Tam, W. S., & Keung, V. (2015). Associations between Parental
Habits: A Survey of Hong Kong Pre-School
Feeding Styles and Childhood Eating
Children. Plos ONE, 10(4), 1-11. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0124753
Kiefner-Burmeister, A., Hoffmann, D., Zbur, S., & Musher-Eizenman, D. (2016). Implementation of parental feeding
practices: does parenting style matter?. Public Health Nutrition, 19(13), 2410-2414. doi:10.1017/S1368980016000446
Mallan, K. M., Fildes, A., Magarey, A. M., & Daniels, L. A. (2016). The Relationship
between Number of Fruits, Vegetables, and Noncore Foods Tried at Age 14 Months and
Food Preferences, Dietary Intake Patterns, Fussy Eating Behavior, and Weight Status at Age 3.7 Years. Journal Of The Academy Of Nutrition
& Dietetics, 116(4), 630-637.
Magarey, A., Mauch, C., Mallan, K., Perry, R., Elovaris, R., Meedeniya, J., & ... Daniels, L.
(2016). Child dietary and eating behavior outcomes up to 3.5 years after an early feeding
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