Parenting styles, food-related parenting practices, and children's healthy eating: A mediation analysis to examine relationships between parenting and child diet

Parents exert a strong influence on their children's diet. While authoritative parenting style is linked to healthier weight and dietary outcomes in children, and authoritarian and permissive parenting styles with unhealthy eating, little is known about the mechanisms that mediate these relatio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Appetite 2018-09, Vol.128, p.205-213
Main Authors: Lopez, Nanette V., Schembre, Susan, Belcher, Britni R., O'Connor, Sydney, Maher, Jaclyn P., Arbel, Reout, Margolin, Gayla, Dunton, Genevieve F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Child
Child Behavior - psychology
Child diet
Child, Preschool
Cross-Sectional Studies
Feeding Behavior - psychology
Female
Food-related parenting practices
Healthy Diet - psychology
Humans
Male
Mothers - psychology
Parent-Child Relations
Parenting - psychology
Parenting style
Surveys and Questionnaires
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Summary:Parents exert a strong influence on their children's diet. While authoritative parenting style is linked to healthier weight and dietary outcomes in children, and authoritarian and permissive parenting styles with unhealthy eating, little is known about the mechanisms that mediate these relationships. Feeding styles are often examined in relation to child diet, but they do not consider the social and physical environmental contexts in which dietary behaviors occur. Therefore, this study examined whether parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive) were associated with three specific food-related parenting practices - mealtime structural practices (e.g., eating meals as a family), parent modeling of healthy food, and household food rules and whether these parenting practices mediated the association between parenting styles and children's diet. Participants were 174 mother-child dyads. Mothers (68% married, 58% college graduates, Mage = 41 years [SD = 6.2]) reported on their parenting practices using validated scales and parenting style using the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire. Children (52% female, Mage = 10 years [SD = 0.9]) completed two telephone-based 24-hour dietary recalls. Dietary outcomes included the Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2010 score, and fruit and vegetables and added sugar intake. Using PROCESS, multiple mediation cross-sectional analyses with parallel mediators using 10,000 bootstraps were performed. Significant indirect effects were observed with mealtime structure and the relationships between authoritative parenting and HEI-2010 score (b = 0.045, p 
ISSN:0195-6663
1095-8304
DOI:10.1016/j.appet.2018.06.021