Child Temperament, Parental Feeding, and Child Obesogenic Eating Behaviors Across Middle Childhood

• In Event: 2-135 - The Role of Parenting and Emotion in Pediatric Obesity Risk

Integrative Statement

Children who eat in response to external food cues (e.g., the sight and smell of food) (food responsiveness) and to manage negative emotions (emotional overeating) are at increased risk for overweight and obesity. In a series of studies using data from the Trondheim Early Secure Study (TESS), a longitudinal study of a community sample of Norwegian children followed biennially from age 4 (n=997), we examined the etiological role of emotions and parenting in these eating behaviors. The parent-reported Child Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ) (Wardle et al, 2001) was used to measure food responsiveness and emotional overeating when the participants were 6, 8 and 10 years old. Our findings reveal that emotionally reactive children who display high levels of negative affectivity as assessed by the Child Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart et al, 2001) prospectively display more food responsiveness and emotional overeating. Using a hybrid fixed effects approach, these findings remained after adjusting for baseline levels of eating behaviors and all unmeasured time-invariant factors (e.g. genetics, stable parenting practices). Additional findings reveal that children high on negative affectivity are more likely to be emotionally fed by their parents, and parents are more likely to use feeding to sooth their child if their offspring display high levels of emotional eating. Importantly, the relation between emotional feeding and emotional eating is bidirectional: Parents who use food to sooth their child (emotional feeding) have offspring who display more emotional eating over time, adjusted for BMI and initial levels of feeding and eating. Our data also reveal that less parental structuring predicts increased emotional overeating from age 6 to 10. With respect to food responsiveness, our studies indicate that (1) parents who use food to reward their children (i.e., instrumental feeding) have offspring who show greater increases in food responsiveness over time; and (2) parental restrained eating prospectively predicts more food responsiveness in offspring, after accounting for children’s initial levels of food responsiveness and all unmeasured time-invariant factors. Taken together, our research indicates that emotionally reactive children are more likely to develop eating behavior associated with increased energy intake and overweight than their less reactive peers. Parenting also plays a substantial role in the etiology of obesogenic eating behaviors: Both parental modeling (restrained eating) and feeding practices (instrumental feeding and emotional feeding) affect the development of food responsiveness and emotional overeating across middle childhood.

Author

• Silje Steinsbekk, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
  Presenting Author