Parenting While Food Insecure: Links Between Adult Food Insecurity, Parenting Aggravation, and Children’s Behaviors

Abstract

Parents who experience food insecurity face not only uncertainty in obtaining food, but an invisible emotional burden, one that can potentially influence both their parenting behaviors and ultimately, their children. In our study, we investigated adult food insecurity’s link to parents’ aggravation and whether that aggravation influenced their children’s behaviors. Results, based on data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 using first-difference regression, showed that parents ( N = 7,820) of first graders who became food insecure experienced heightened parenting aggravation (0.525; p < .01). Our mediation analysis on a matched sample of food secure ( n = 1,600) and insecure parents ( n = 470) revealed that adult food insecurity was not directly associated with children’s behaviors; rather, it was indirectly related to lowered attentional focus (−0.062; p < .05) and inhibitory control (−0.093; p < .001) via parenting aggravation. Our findings underscore the importance of parenting aggravation in transmitting the effects of food insecurity on children’s behaviors.

Hunger in the household: Food insecurity and associations with maternal eating and toddler feeding

“…9,10 According to the family stress model, 11 household food insecurity is an economic pressure that affects parents' psychological stress, which in turn affects parenting behavior. 12…”

Food Insecurity: What Are Its Effects, Why, and What Can Policy Do About It?

“…In early childhood, household food insecurity is associated with parents’ increased depressive symptoms, harsher discipline strategies, and greater conflict in nationally representative data (Johnson & Markowitz, 2018b). In the ECLS-K, food-insecure parents of first graders engaged in more parenting aggression compared with food-secure parents (Gee & Asim, 2019); and, in a sample of parents of 12- to 14-year olds in the 2002 National Survey of American Families, household food insecurity was associated with increased parental mental health problems and decreased parenting quality (Ashiabi & Neal, 2007).…”

“…For instance, food insecurity contributes to parent stress and depression, which impacts child attachment, social-emotional, and cognitive outcomes in infancy and early childhood (Markowitz et al, in press; Zaslow et al, 2009). Other research on very young and school-aged children provides evidence that food insecurity acts through parent stress, aggravation, warmth, and depression to affect child behavior problems (Huang et al, 2010; Slack & Yoo, 2005) and attention and inhibitory control (Gee & Asim, 2019).…”

Healthy and Indulgent Food Consumption Practices Within Grandparent–Grandchild Identity Bundles: A Qualitative Study of New Zealand and Danish Families

“…There is increasing scholarly interest in the meaning and social contexts shaping food practices, not least within family life (Downey & Gudmunson, 2017;Gee & Asim, 2019;Jarrett, Bahar & Kersh, 2016). Much feeding takes place within family settings, and food is deeply bound up with the construction and reconstruction of family roles and relationships and indeed family itself (Cappellini et al, 2019;Coccia & Darling, 2017;DeVault, 1991;Jackson, 2009).…”