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

Nanette V Lopez; Susan Schembre; Britni R Belcher; Sydney O'Connor; Jaclyn P Maher; Reout Arbel; Gayla Margolin; Genevieve F Dunton

doi:10.1016/j.appet.2018.06.021

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

Appetite. 2018 Sep 1:128:205-213. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2018.06.021. Epub 2018 Jun 18.

Authors

Nanette V Lopez¹, Susan Schembre², Britni R Belcher³, Sydney O'Connor⁴, Jaclyn P Maher⁵, Reout Arbel⁶, Gayla Margolin⁷, Genevieve F Dunton⁸

Affiliations

¹ Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, 2001 North Soto Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90032, USA. Electronic address: nanettel@usc.edu.
² Department of Behavioral Science, Division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences, University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1155 Pressler Street, Houston, TX, 77030, USA. Electronic address: Sschembre@mdanderson.org.
³ Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, 2001 North Soto Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90032, USA. Electronic address: bbelcher@usc.edu.
⁴ Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, 2001 North Soto Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90032, USA. Electronic address: sgoconno@usc.edu.
⁵ Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, 2001 North Soto Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90032, USA; Department of Kinesiology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1408 Walker Avenue, 237H Coleman Building, Greensboro, NC, 27412, USA. Electronic address: jpmaher@uncg.edu.
⁶ Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, 3620 South McClintock Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA. Electronic address: reout.arbel@gmail.com.
⁷ Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, 3620 South McClintock Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA. Electronic address: margolin@usc.edu.
⁸ Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, 2001 North Soto Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90032, USA. Electronic address: dunton@usc.edu.

Abstract

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, M_age = 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, M_age = 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 < .05, CI = [0.006, 0.126]), authoritarian parenting and HEI-2010 score (b = -0.055, p < .05, CI = [-0.167, -0.001]), and permissive parenting and HEI-2010 score (b = -0.093, p < .05, CI = [-0.265, -0.008]). Child diet quality is affected by mealtime structural practices. Further examination of the features by which mealtime structural practices serve as a mechanism for parents to support healthy eating among their children may improve children's diet quality.

Keywords: Child diet; Food-related parenting practices; Parenting style.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Adult
Child
Child Behavior / psychology*
Child, Preschool
Cross-Sectional Studies
Diet, Healthy / psychology*
Feeding Behavior / psychology*
Female
Humans
Male
Mothers / psychology*
Parent-Child Relations
Parenting / psychology*
Surveys and Questionnaires

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding