Managing young children's snack food intake. The role of parenting style and feeding strategies

•Restrictive feeding is associated with more unhealthy and less healthy snack intake.•Covert strategies are associated with more healthy and less unhealthy snack intake.•More demandingness and less responsiveness predicts restrictive feeding strategies.•Parenting style and child snack intake is medi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Appetite 2015-09, Vol.92, p.94-101
Main Authors: Boots, Samantha B., Tiggemann, Marika, Corsini, Nadia, Mattiske, Julie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Child
Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena
Child snack intake
Child, Preschool
Childhood obesity
Diet
Feeding Behavior - psychology
Female
Humans
Maternal feeding strategies
Mothers
Parent-Child Relations
Parenting
Parenting - psychology
Pediatric Obesity - etiology
Pediatric Obesity - prevention & control
Snacks - psychology
Surveys and Questionnaires
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Summary:•Restrictive feeding is associated with more unhealthy and less healthy snack intake.•Covert strategies are associated with more healthy and less unhealthy snack intake.•More demandingness and less responsiveness predicts restrictive feeding strategies.•Parenting style and child snack intake is mediated by parent feeding strategy. One major contributor to the problem of childhood overweight and obesity is the over-consumption of foods high in fat, salt and sugar, such as snack foods. The current study aimed to examine young children's snack intake and the influence of feeding strategies used by parents in the context of general parenting style. Participants were 611 mothers of children aged 2–7 years who completed an online questionnaire containing measures of general parenting domains and two particular feeding strategies, restriction and covert control. It was found that greater unhealthy snack intake was associated with higher restriction and lower covert control, while greater healthy snack intake was associated with lower restriction and higher covert control. Further, the feeding strategies mediated the association between parental demandingness and responsiveness and child snack intake. These findings provide evidence for the differential impact of controlling and positive parental feeding strategies on young children's snack intake in the context of general parenting.
ISSN:0195-6663
1095-8304
DOI:10.1016/j.appet.2015.05.012