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Differences in parental behaviour, emotions, and cognitions between children's eating profiles

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posted on 2025-03-27, 12:24 authored by KL Edwards, A Pickard, C Farrow, Emma HaycraftEmma Haycraft, M Herle, C Llewellyn, H Croker, J Blissett

A variety of parent psychological characteristics (e.g., wellbeing) have been related to children's eating behaviour. However, parent-child feeding interactions are reciprocal and complex, including relationships between parental cognitions, emotions, as well as the influence of children's varying appetitive traits. Using a person-centred approach, children's appetitive traits can be clustered into meaningful eating profiles. To date, no research has examined whether parental behaviours, emotions, and cognitions differ depending on a child's eating profile. Hence, this study recruited parents/primary caregivers from the APPETItE project, whose child had previously been identified as having an avoidant, typical, happy, or avid eating profile. Parents/primary caregivers of children (3–6 years; N = 632) completed online questionnaires examining broader parenting behaviour (parenting styles), parental emotions (stress, wellbeing), and parental cognitions (goals, self-efficacy, time and energy for meal planning and preparation, and perceptions about children's body size). Findings showed significant differences in parent responses to the questionnaires based on children's eating profiles. Parents of children with a happy eating profile reported better psychological wellbeing and greater parenting time and energy for meal planning and preparation, as well as being less likely to report goals of avoiding mealtime stress and conflict. In contrast, parents of children with an avoidant eating profile reported poorer psychological wellbeing. Children with an avid eating profile were perceived by parents as having a higher body weight, whereas children with an avoidant eating profile were perceived as having a lower body weight. Overall, these findings demonstrate that differences in parental characteristics and perceptions exist between children's eating profiles and thus should be considered in the development of tailored interventions to support children's healthy eating.

Funding

Parenting pre-schoolers with avid appetites: Understanding differential susceptibility to obesogenic environments for future intervention efficacy.

Economic and Social Research Council

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History

Published in

Appetite

Volume

202

Publisher

Elsevier Ltd.

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Acceptance date

2024-08-19

Publication date

2024-08-20

Copyright date

2024

ISSN

0195-6663

eISSN

1095-8304

Language

  • en

Depositor

Prof Emma Haycraft. Deposit date: 25 October 2024

Article number

107641

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