ResearchCurrent ResearchParental Feeding Practices Predict Authoritative, Authoritarian, and Permissive Parenting Styles
Section snippets
Sample
Two hundred thirty-nine parents (93.5% mothers) of first-grade children (134 boys; 105 girls) participated in this first wave of a public-school-based, randomized-controlled intervention study. After obtaining consent from school administration, families of first-grade children were recruited from 20 elementary schools in north-central Oklahoma during fall 2005. Sampling of schools in the region was purposive, that is, designed to sample rural schools: Stratified random sampling techniques were
Results
Table 1 presents descriptive statistics on the demographic characteristics of the sample. Monthly income category responses ranged from $0 to $100 per month (22 families) to $4,000 plus per month (45 families), with the median indicating a $24,000 to $30,000 annual income, a figure below the median household income of $37,020 for the state of Oklahoma in 2005 (30). Most of the sample had graduated from high school and 31% from college. Further, the sample was largely non-Hispanic white and
Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first study showing that well-respected measures of parental feeding practices (1, 2, 4) identified in the nutrition literature as authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive predict those same general parenting styles. Measures of feeding practices explained the most variance in authoritative parenting, followed by authoritarian, and then permissive. Encouraging practices did not contribute significantly to any prediction.
As hypothesized, parental perceptions of
Conclusions
General parenting styles are linked to parental feeding practices. Current results confirm restriction and pressure to eat are authoritarian whereas modeling, monitoring, and perceptions of responsibility are authoritative, and low modeling is permissive in style. Food and nutrition professionals who are implementing dietary change or obesity treatment programs need to include more complex approaches to behavioral change that include parenting styles and family dynamics. Without addressing the
L. Hubbs-Tait is a professor, G. L. Topham is an assistant professor, and A. W. Harrist, is an associate professor, Department of Human Development and Family Science, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater
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L. Hubbs-Tait is a professor, G. L. Topham is an assistant professor, and A. W. Harrist, is an associate professor, Department of Human Development and Family Science, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater
T. S. Kennedy is an associate professor, Department of Nutritional Sciences, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater
M. C. Page is an associate professor, Department of Psychology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater