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Parental Feeding Practices Predict Authoritative, Authoritarian, and Permissive Parenting Styles

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2008.04.008Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Our goal was to identify how parental feeding practices from the nutrition literature link to general parenting styles from the child development literature to understand how to target parenting practices to increase effectiveness of interventions. Stand-alone parental feeding practices could be targeted independently. However, parental feeding practices linked to parenting styles require interventions treating underlying family dynamics as a whole.

Objective

To predict parenting styles from feeding practices and to test three hypotheses: restriction and pressure to eat are positively related whereas responsibility, monitoring, modeling, and encouraging are negatively related to an authoritarian parenting style; responsibility, monitoring, modeling, and encouraging are positively related whereas restriction and pressure to eat are negatively related to an authoritative parenting style; a permissive parenting style is negatively linked with all six feeding practices.

Design

Baseline data of a randomized-controlled intervention study.

Subjects/setting

Two hundred thirty-nine parents (93.5% mothers) of first-grade children (134 boys, 105 girls) enrolled in rural public schools.

Measures

Parental responses to encouraging and modeling questionnaires and the Child Feeding Questionnaire, as well as parenting styles measured by the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire.

Statistical analyses

Correlation and regression analyses.

Results

Feeding practices explained 21%, 15%, and 8% of the variance in authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting, respectively. Restriction, pressure to eat, and monitoring (negative) significantly predicted an authoritarian style (Hypothesis 1); responsibility, restriction (negative), monitoring, and modeling predicted an authoritative style (Hypothesis 2); and modeling (negative) and restriction significantly predicted a permissive style (Hypothesis 3).

Conclusions

Parental feeding practices with young children predict general parenting styles. Interventions that fail to address underlying parenting styles are not likely to be successful.

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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  • Cited by (136)

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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

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