Parent Gender Affects the Influence of Parent Emotional Eating and Feeding Practices on Child Emotional Eating
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Date
2021-09-10
Authors
Trevino, Shaina D.
Kelly, Nichole R.
Budd, Elizabeth L.
Giuliani, Nicole R.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Frontiers in Psychology
Abstract
Extant research supports a direct association between parent’s own emotional eating
and their child’s emotional eating, and demonstrates correlations among parent
emotional eating, feeding practices, and child emotional eating. However, the majority
of this work focuses on the separate influences of these factors. The current study aims
to add to the literature by simultaneously examining the indirect effects of three major
parental feeding practices (i.e., emotion regulation, instrumental, and restrictive feeding)
in the association between parent emotional eating and child emotional eating, and
exploring how these indirect effects vary based on parent gender. Parents (86 fathers,
324 mothers) of an elementary school-age child (M = 8.35, SD = 2.29, range = 5–13)
completed an online survey through Qualtrics Panels. Results suggested that restrictive
feeding partially accounted for the association between parent and child emotional
eating in the combined sample of mothers and fathers. Exploratory analyses revealed
that the indirect effects of parental feeding practices in the association between parent
emotional eating and child emotional eating varied based on parent gender. Among
mothers, restrictive feeding was the only feeding practice that partially accounted for
the association between maternal and child emotional eating, whereas all three feeding
practices fully accounted for the association between father and child emotional eating.
As the bulk of the literature on parent emotional eating and feeding has solely focused
on mothers, these findings offer insight into how feeding practices may differentially
function in the relation between parent emotional eating and child emotional eating for
mothers versus fathers.
Description
12 pages
Keywords
Parent emotional eating, Child emotional eating, Feeding practices, Child eating behavior, Parental feeding, Parent gender
Citation
Trevino SD, Kelly NR, Budd EL and Giuliani NR (2021) Parent Gender Affects the Influence of Parent Emotional Eating and Feeding Practices on Child Emotional Eating. Front. Psychol. 12:654237. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.654237