Feeding practices of mothers from varied income and racial/ethnic groups

Abstract

OBJECTIVE Relatively few investigators have explored the role of maternal control in describing the feeding behavior of nonwhite parents of preschool-age children. The present study was conducted to examine if controlling feeding behaviors (i.e., restriction and pressuring) varied by income (middle vs. low) and race/ethnicity (white vs. Hispanic), and if they were associated with the BMI of their 4-year-old offspring. METHOD Responses to the “restriction” and “pressure to eat” variables of the Child Feeding Questionnaire were compared between 51 white middle-income mothers and 49 Hispanic low-income mothers. RESULTS Mothers from both groups gave predominantly “neutral” ratings in their self-reports of feeding practices. However, relative to the Hispanic mothers, white mothers indicated significantly less restriction and pressure to eat. Higher child BMI was predicted by male gender and being Hispanic. CONCLUSION The utility of maternal feeding practices in predicting child overweight is discussed, and the significant association between the conceptually different constructs of restriction and pressure to eat is examined.

Effects of children's self-regulation of eating on parental feeding practices and child weight

“…Restrictive feeding practices were significantly associated with enjoyment of food and satiety responsiveness in the African American families, but none of the associations between restriction and child weight status was significant in Hispanic families. In a study of white middle-income and Hispanic low-income mothers and their preschool-age children, Worobey, Borrelli, Espinosa, and Worobey (2013) found lowincome Hispanic mothers self-reported greater use of both restriction and pressure to eat compared with white middle-income mothers, but neither controlling feeding practice predicted children's BMI percentiles. However, as in our study (Table 1) Differences between the two racial/ethnic groups relative to the effect of controlling feeding practices may be the result of differing interpretations of the questionnaire items between the African American and Hispanic families (Anderson, Hughes, Fisher, & Nicklas, 2005).…”

Contextual and Cultural Influences on Parental Feeding Practices and Involvement in Child Care Centers among Hispanic Parents

“…[19][20][21][22][23][24] On one hand, restriction and pressure to eat has been found to be more common among low-income Hispanic mothers when compared to low-income non-Hispanic whites. 25 On the other hand, Hispanic parents are also more likely to engage in permissive and indulgent feeding during meal times, compared to other racial and ethnic groups. In addition, the child feeding literature has focused primarily on parents and feeding within the home, 31 but 60% of children in the US now spend some time in a child-care setting.…”

Family Meal- and Related-Practices in Families of Preschoolers: Differences by Family Income

“…Despite the evenness in number of the two groups of mother-child dyads, their different racial/ethnic composition as well as their educational levels presents a confound to income as the explanatory variable; however, this weakness may be a standard criticism of studies that explore the impact of socioeconomic status on maternal behavior (Baughcum et al, 2001;Powers et al, 2006;Worobey et al, 2013). Another weakness lies in the unavailability of BMI data for the Head Start children.…”

“…Hughes et al (2006) found low-income Hispanic parents to report more parent-centered/high control feeding strategies as compared to low-income African-American parents, while Worobey, Borelli, Espinosa and Worobey (2013) found low-income Hispanic mothers to be higher in restriction and pressuring to eat relative to middle-income white mothers, with the Hispanic children at higher weight. Some research has shown lower-income African-American mothers to score higher than higher-income white mothers on restriction and pressuring to eat (Spruijt-Metz, Lindquist, Birch, Fisher, & Goran, 2002), but other work shows a more complex association between feeding style and child weight.…”

“…These results suggest that the family meal need not refer exclusively to dinner. However, minority status in the Andaya et al (2011) study may have been confounded with low income, as is apparent in the work on feeding styles (Baughcum et al, 2001;Powers et al, 2006;Worobey et al, 2013).…”