Poster #6 - “No more M&Ms!” The effect of parents’ cortisol and DHEA reactivity on controlling feeding behaviors

• In Event: Poster Session 20

Abstract

Parental controlling feeding behaviors decrease child food acceptance (Scaglioni et al., 2011) as well as increase consumption of calorie-rich foods (Loth, 2016). Stress impacts parenting behaviors. Specifically, interviews with parents highlight that momentary factors such as stress can lead them to resort to coercive feeding practices (Loth et al., 2018). Moreover, ecological momentary assessments reveal that parent stress during the day was related to more pressuring feeding styles at dinner with their children (Berge et al., 2017). Previous survey research with mothers has also shown that stress is positively associated with the use restriction and pressuring feeding styles (El-Behadli et al., 2015; Mitchell et al., 2009). However, these studies focus on subjective reports of stress, and there is a dearth of research examining parental physiological stress and its impact on feeding behaviors. The hormones cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) regulate our HPA-axis, and are found to have opposing regulatory functions: cortisol increases stress-risk, while DHEA has a protective role in minimizing that risk (Kamin & Kertis, 2017). Due to their opposing functions, they are often examined as a ratio, relative to each other. The DHEA/Cortisol ratio has predominantly been explored in older adults in the context of health and disease (Sollberger & Ehlert, 2016). In our study, we sought to build from prior work on stress, feeding behaviors and hormone ratios to examine how parental physiological stress reactivity would influence their feeding behaviors in an experimental setting.
We had n = 83 parents, with video-recordings from 41 mothers and 42 fathers participate as part of a larger longitudinal study. 39% parents were Hispanic/Latinx and 39% parents had annual household income above $100,000. The children in the study had an average age of 42 months (SDage = 4.48 months). Parents completed the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) in the laboratory (Dickerson & Kemeny, 2004; Kirshbaum et al., 1993; Kudielka et al., 2007). Salivary samples were collected at 4 timepoints during the visit to index stress reactivity and later assayed for cortisol and DHEA. During the preparation period of the speech task of the TSST, a plate of snacks was offered to the child. Parent-child interactions during this period were videotaped, and observationally coded using the scheme in Doan et al. (2022) to account for parent use of controlling feeding behaviors. To examine whether parent stress physiology predicts their feeding behaviors, we ran a Poisson regression using income, parent ethnicity, parent (mom/dad), time of day and DHEA/Cortisol Ratio as predictors of controlling feeding behavior. Latinx parents used less controlling feeding behaviors, b = -.324, SE = .158, p = .04. Parents with a higher DHEA/Cortisol ratio were less likely to use controlling feeding behaviors, b = -.217, SE = .086, p = .012 (Table 1). There was no moderation by parent sex. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that for both mothers and fathers, DHEA relative to cortisol has a protective role in controlling feeding practices, and lends support to the role of acute stress reactivity in predicting behavioral outcomes.

Authors

• Shruthi Venkatesh, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Presenting Author

• Stacey N Doan, Claremont Mckenna College