Abstract
Children's eating behaviors are shaped significantly by their home food environment, including exposure to food parenting practices. The current study leveraged ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to describe how food parenting practices used to feed preschoolers (n = 116) differed across contextual factors around eating, including type of eating occasion (i.e., meals vs. snacks), day of the week (i.e., weekend vs. weekday), who initiated the meal (parent vs. child), emotional climate of the eating occasion. Parent perceptions of how well the eating occasion went, including how well the child ate and whether the food parenting practices worked as intended were also explored. Parent use of specific food parenting practices, situated within four higher-order domains (i.e., structure, autonomy support, coercive control, indulgent), was found to differ by type of eating occasion; parents engaged in a higher proportion of structure practices at meals than at snacks. Use of specific food parenting practices differed by mealtime emotional climate; parent use of structure and autonomy support was associated with eating occasions described as relaxed, enjoyable, neutral, and fun. Finally, parent perception of how well the child ate differed by use of specific food parenting practices; during eating occasions when parent's felt their child ate “not enough”, they used less autonomy support and more coercive control compared to eating occasions where the child ate “enough and a good balance.” Leveraging EMA allowed for increased understanding of the variability in food parenting practices and contextual factors. Findings may be utilized to inform the development of larger-scale studies seeking to understand why parents choose specific approaches to feeding their children, as well as the impact of various approaches to child feeding on child health outcomes.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 106635 |
| Journal | Appetite |
| Volume | 188 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 1 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is a method of real-time data collection that has the potential to advance the science of food parenting by moving beyond survey assessments of “typical” behavior to better understand how use of specific food parenting practices vary across time and context. For example, our EMA research has revealed that parents of preschoolers do not have a singular approach (e.g., controlling), but rather utilize a broad range of food parenting practices in real-time over the course of the day.(Loth et al., 2022a) While practices reflecting structure and autonomy support were used more frequently, most parents in the sample were found to use a variety of practices generally regarded as supportive(Vaughn et al., 2016) (i.e., structure and autonomy support) and unsupportive(Loth et al., 2022a) (i.e. coercive control and indulgent) food parenting practices on any given day. These findings challenged the previously held assumption that parents tend to use either primarily supportive or unsupportive practices,(Loth et al., 2022b) and, instead, use a variety of practices dependent on context. In addition, in an interview-based qualitative research study we conducted with parents of preschoolers, parents reported using a combination of practices from across the full range of theoretical domains; parents also indicated that feeding practices were easily influenced by momentary factors that shifted their approach within and across eating occasions.(Loth, Uy et al., 2018) Specifically, parents described momentary factors (e.g., schedule changes, parent stress, and child behavior) that shifted them away from an “aspirational” environment of structure and autonomy support feeding practices, towards a more “situational or coping” environment of indulgent and coercive feeding practices.(Loth, Uy et al., 2018) While these findings provide preliminary evidence that food parenting approaches are dynamic, contextual drivers are not well characterized.This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K23HD090324-02; PI: Loth), the University of Minnesota Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UL1TR002494), and the National Institutes of Health, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (R35HL139853, PI: Neumark-Sztainer). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health, the National Institutes of Health Institute of Child Health and the Human Development or National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Funders did not play a role in the study design, data collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, nor in the writing of the report or the decision to submit this article for publication.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health Institute of Child Health and Human Development ( K23HD090324-02 ; PI: Loth), the University of Minnesota Clinical and Translational Science Institute ( UL1TR002494 ), and the National Institutes of Health , National Heart Lung and Blood Institute ( R35HL139853 , PI: Neumark-Sztainer). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health, the National Institutes of Health Institute of Child Health and the Human Development or National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Funders did not play a role in the study design, data collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, nor in the writing of the report or the decision to submit this article for publication.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article
- Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural