Day-to-Day Variability in Mothers’ and Fathers’ Dinnertime Feeding Practices

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Integrative Statement

Positive parent-child feeding relationships are characterized by a division of responsibility; parents are responsible for what, when, and where foods are served, and children are responsible for how much and whether to eat those foods (Satter, 1990). Overly controlling (pressure and/or restriction) and indulgent feeding practices do not support this division of responsibility, leading to negative eating and health outcomes for children (Birch & Fisher, 1998; Frankel et al., 2014). Conversely, parents’ provision of optimal support during feeding (setting the location, timing, and healthy content of meals) is related to positive child eating outcomes (Finnane et al., 2017; Frankel et al., 2017). Nonetheless, past research does not recognize that parents might not be consistent from day-to-day or meal-to-meal when feeding their children. Daily diary reports can provide a more authentic view of family experiences than a single-timepoint. A benefit of measuring family interaction using diary methods is that it allows researchers to explore family events and processes in their natural, spontaneous environment (Laurenceau & Bolger, 2005). Thus, the aim of this paper was to examine day-to-day variability in mothers’ and fathers’ daily reports of controlling, indulgent, and supportive feeding practices during dinnertime over seven days.

The current subsample included 38 families with a 3- to 5-year-old child (reports provided from 38 mothers and 30 fathers); data collection is on-going as part of a larger project. Most participants were Caucasian (68%) or Hispanic (13%). The majority of families reported a total family income between $75,000-$100,000 (range: $25,000-$200,000). Mothers and fathers completed online surveys separately each day after dinnertime. The Comprehensive Feeding Practices Measure (Musher-Eizenman & Holub, 2007) was revised to reflect daily pressure (4 items) and restriction (4 items). The F-Scape (6 items; Musher-Eizenman et al., under review) was revised to asses daily indulgent feeding, and the Feeding Practices and Structure Questionnaire (7 items; Jansen et al., 2016) was revised to measure daily supportive feeding practices.

Unconditional multilevel models with random intercepts were run in Mplus v.8 to determine whether there was day-to-day (i.e., within-person) variability in parents’ reported feeding practices. There was significant within-person variability in mothers’ and fathers’ reports of restriction, pressure, indulgence, and support during feeding (see Table 1). Approximately 49% of the total variance in mothers’ restriction, 29% in pressure, 31% in indulgence, and 28% in support was found at the within level, as opposed to the between level which reflects average differences across the week between families. With the exception of restriction, higher proportions of day-to-day variance in feeding were found among fathers than mothers with 39% of the total variance in fathers’ restriction, 65% in pressure, 46% in indulgence, and 51% in support found at the within level.

Findings suggest that there is significant variability from one day to the next in mothers’ and fathers’ feeding practices across seven days, although the proportion of total variance explained at the daily level varies between mothers and fathers and across feeding practice. This has implications for feeding research, and highlights the utility of intensive longitudinal designs.

Authors

• Shayla Holub, University of Texas at Dallas
  Presenting Author

• Jackie A Nelson, University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deyaun Lynn Villarreal, The University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Olivia Smith, University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author