Food Insecurity Moderates Associations between Parenting and Eating Behavior in Toddlers

• In Event: Influences on child obesity and obesity-related health behaviors from infancy through adolescence

Abstract

Background: Food-specific parenting (e.g., indulgent, restrictive feeding) and to some degree, general parenting (e.g., laxness, harsh discipline) have been found to associate with child behaviors such as eating in the absence of hunger (EAH) that may increase risk for early overweight/obesity. Social contextual forces relevant for food and eating, such as food insecurity, likely play a role in how families interact around food and eating during early childhood, yet we do not understand whether or how such factors shape these early associations. The current study therefore sought to examine: 1) associations between both general and food-specific parenting behavior and EAH in toddler-aged children living in poverty, and 2) whether parenting-EAH associations were moderated by family food insecurity.

Method: Participants were families (n = 119; M age = 2.8 years (SD = .05) living in poverty, a population at high-risk for childhood overweight/obesity. Children completed a standardized EAH task wherein they ate to satiety and then allowed to consume 7 additional snack foods for 10 minutes (Asta 2016). Total EAH kilocalories consumed was calculated. General parenting behavior (sensitivity, negative control, negative and positive affect) was reliably coded (K > .70) based on a dyadic free play observation. Parents reported on food specific (indulgent and restrictive feeding subscales of the Infant Feeding Style Questionnaire; Thompson 2009), and general parenting (Lax and Harsh subscales of the Parenting Scale; Arnold 1993) and family food insecurity (U.S. Household Food Security Scale; Bickel et al., 2000). Regression analyses tested whether food-specific and general parenting predicted child EAH and whether associations differed by family food insecurity status.

Results: In bivariate analyses, observed parental negative affect and self-reported harsh parenting were significantly associated with more EAH (p’s < .05). Maternal self-reported indulgent feeding was associated at trend level with less EAH (p = .071). Regression analyses controlling for child BMIz indicated that self-reported harsh parenting (β = .18, p = .044) and observed negative affect (β = .18, p = .038) were positively associated with EAH. Regression analyses testing the interaction between parenting and food security revealed that food security moderated harsh parenting-EAH (βinteraction = .758; p = .069) and indulgent feeding-EAH (βinteraction = .849; p = .026) associations. Specifically, we found that harsh parenting was associated with more EAH in the context of family food insecurity, but that this association was not significant among families with food security (see Figure 1). In contrast, indulgent feeding was not associated with EAH among families experiencing food insecurity, whereas indulgent feeding was associated with less EAH among families with food security (see Figure 2).

Conclusions: In toddlerhood, family food insecurity status moderated the effects of both food-specific parenting (i.e., indulgent feeding) and general parenting (i.e., harsh parenting) on toddler’s EAH in a laboratory eating task. Parental indulgent feeding was associated with less EAH only for families with food security, whereas harsh parenting was associated with more EAH only for food insecure families. Programs must consider these social contextual forces relevant for food and eating when considering intervention targets.

Authors

• Hurley O. Riley, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• Sara F Stein, University of Michigan

• Julie Sturza

• Julie Lumeng, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Katherine L Rosenblum, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Alison Leslie Miller, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor